


Gleam

by candyvan



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Emotional Constipation, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Slow Build, canon compliant up to season 4, messed up teenagers trying to deal with feelings, this could've been Beauty and the Beast but nOPE IT'S SLEEPING BEAUTY BC I'M A RENEGADE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-09
Updated: 2017-02-11
Packaged: 2018-03-06 19:23:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 47,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3145736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/candyvan/pseuds/candyvan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When she's 10 years old, Lydia befriends a curious coyote in the woods. Six years later, Scott McCall transforms the wild animal into a lost girl. It should be a dream come true. </p><p>Unfortunately, things are more complicated than that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I walked with you once upon a dream

Lydia's grandmother dies when she's ten, and it leaves a hole the size of a wrecking ball in her chest. The edges fray and burn against her skin, leaving her sobbing at 3 am, just wishing for the calming voice of her grandmother, the soothing feel of wrinkled skin holding her, the scent of Coco Chanel no.5 surrounding her.

It leaves her a fiery ball of rage, and she throws every single book the old woman got her out the window. She tears clothes to shreds and breaks picture frames against the floor. Her sorrow is a war cry of anger and fury, but the heat of her rage does nothing to keep her warm like her grandmother's hug could.

She tries. She tries so hard to be as calm and disaffected as her father is, to be the strong pillar her mother is, but Lydia just loves her grandma so much, and it all feels so unfair, like the world and everyone in it are against her. The pain fills her, from her toes to the ends of her hair, and she feels a desperate urge to scream choking her.

The piano music they play is too peppy for such a morbid day. It grates on her tiny nerves until even the air burns like chemicals as it touches her skin. Her grandma didn't even like church, and Lydia doesn't blame her as she stares at the high arches and the stain glass windows.

“Come on, Lydia dear,” her mother's wobbly voice whispers into her ear. Lydia's hands are shaking as she grips her mother's hand tight, choking on the words that get stuck under her tongue. How desperately she wants to beg to not have to go up there. The fear consumes her, gathers in her chest and claws against her rib cage so harshly that it might just force itself out of her.

The words don't come, and her body is pliant as her mother directs her out of the church pew.

Legs stiff, heart quiet, and eyes unblinking, Lydia greets her grandma.

The sight of her feels like Lydia's just been thrown into an iced pond, like she missed a step and is falling down a hundred flights of stairs. Her breaths come out quick and stuttered. Her hair feels like claws as it hangs around her throat.

She's running before she even realizes it.

She hears people gasp and call out for her, but she just runs and runs, even as the tiny kitten heels make her stumble and threaten to break her neck. She kicks them off at the doors of the church, always one to be practical, and rushes down the steep steps.

The sun glares harshly off of gravestones and statues; Lydia feels ghosts and phantom hands reach up and grab at her as she rushes between the burial sights. She almost trips and falls into an open grave, stomach sinking and tears building as she wonders if it's her grandmother's.

A sob forces itself out of her mouth, then another, and Lydia's off again, careful to not step on any grave markers or fall into any holes. No one's calling for her anymore. The wind is the only voice in her ears as she runs. It feels like someone is holding a pillow over her face. The pounding in her chest worsens and she imagines her throat growing like that of a frog before it croaks.

She pushes herself harder, tears like ice on her cheeks in the middle of Spring. She doesn't feel the chill of morning air, even as she's only in a dress and stockings.

There's a hole in the fence of the yard and Lydia crashes through it, feels the metal rake against the soft skin of her arms. It doesn't break the skin, just burns but she doesn't stop running. It doesn't compare to the burning of her heart or the sting of tears against her cheeks.

The world dissolves into forest. She can't hear the sobs of the people in the church or feel the quiet grief that rests over the cemetery like a blanket. The forest is a blur of green as she runs, and she refuses to acknowledge that she has no idea where she's going until she almost falls into a pond.

Her squeak is loud in the quiet of the forest, sending a flock of birds to the sky with eerie caws. Her foot is wet, water freezing this close to the mountains. She thinks of the dirt for only a second before sitting down, pretty dress already ruined beyond repair. There are twigs and leaves sticking to it, a garish hole cut in the fabric.

Lydia imagines her mother won't be happy with her at all.

Her white tights are ripped along her feet. The fragile fabric is nothing against the force of nature. She mindlessly prods at the exposed skin, sighing to herself at the light spark of pain.

She wipes the snot and tears from her cheeks as she looks around the forest, trying to find where she is. Lydia's only been in the Beacon Hills preserve twice in her life; once on a family picnic and again on a school field trip. Both trips were kept near the mouth of the preserve, where the trees are spread out and there are hiking trails going in every direction.

There are no trails around Lydia, though. There are only dense forest and the quiet presence of thousands of animals and insects around her. It's oddly calming, despite how small it makes her feel.

She struggles to her feet and looks around, trying to find where she came from, but everything looks the same to her. Lydia tries to find footprints, but the ground is solid and her tights kept her footsteps light and indistinguishable in the terrain.

She frowns, fear prickling in her chest. The tiny pond has to have a trail coming out of it, right? This place is too beautiful to not be discovered by humans. Lydia walks the perimeter, hoping to find something that sparks her memory, but each bush looks exactly like the next.

Lydia's certain she would be crying, if not having already done so merely minutes ago.

As if to add more strife to her life, it begins to sprinkle. Tiny little rain drops fall from the sky, misting in the air. She gasps and covers her head with her hands, but it does nothing to protect her from the elements. Lydia clenches her eyes shut and tries to breathe and think, but it's cold now, air dropping due to the frigid rain. She shudders, blinks the water from her eyes, and tries to find a safe place to hide. At least until the rain stops, and maybe it'll be easier to find her way back to the church.

There's a cave up ahead. She can see the opening between two trees, the perfect hiding place. Lydia's sure she's not the only one to think of that, though. There's possibly tons of animals out here that would love to have a home so close to a source of water. She tries to grab a large rock for protection, but it slips between her slick fingers. Lydia settles for a medium sized stick and holds it in her hands like a bat.

The cave is big enough so she doesn't have to crouch down, but it gets more narrow as she walks further into it. It's not horribly big, but it'll work for a medium sized animal, or a child. She can hide here for a few hours and make her way back to her parents safely. It's a great plan, she applauds herself as she drops the stick.

At least, that's what Lydia thinks before she hears the growl.

It's low and throaty, something an impolite dog might let out if you step too close to its meal. Lydia turns slightly, and she sees a wolf. Only, they don't look like the type of wolves she's seen in books at school. their ears are sharper and slanted. Everything about them is smaller, except for its slightly longer snout and huge feet. Lydia sees brown eyes, and shudders at how human they seem.

She feels like someone has poured ice water down her back, body tense and ready to run even though she knows it would be a horrible idea and lead only to her death.

“Um,” Lydia squeaks. She knows fear won't help her now, but she can't stop her knees from shaking. Animals can smell fear, can't they? The wolf doesn't lunge for her throat, though, so Lydia tries to relax a bit. “Good wolf. I'm not trying to hurt you or anything.” The wolf lets out a tiny noise, a huff, like the idea is preposterous. “I just need a place to hide for a little while. From the rain.”

The animal appraises her with their head cocked, and it might be adorable if Lydia wasn't a few seconds away from releasing her bladder.

They stare at each other for a few long seconds, even as Lydia can see lines of text in books, telling her to never look an animal in the eye. It's a challenge, a threat, and Lydia isn't in a position to make either of those.

Lydia tries to creep toward the mouth of the cave, maybe she'll be able to hide in some tree, but the wolf tracks her movements, eyes cutting her to the bone. She freezes in place, feeling as if time itself has stopped.

Finally, the animal relaxes. They drop their head to their large paws and let out a sigh as if they can't even be bothered to expend the energy to chase Lydia down.

Her breath comes out in a quick exhale, relief warming her entire body.

“If it's okay for me to stay in your cave, don't react,” Lydia suggests, smiling slightly as the wolf doesn't even blink.

She relaxes against the wall of the cave and stares out into the rain, watching as rain drops fall quickly.

Lydia must fall asleep because next time she opens her eyes, the sun is hiding behind the trees and there's a crick in her neck that sends a sharp pain down her spine. The rain's stopped, and it looks like it's been stopped for a while now. The dirt around the cave is dark, but it's not slicked wet and muddy.

The wolf is sitting up now, watching her with their too human eyes.

“Hope I didn't overstay my welcome,” Lydia says quietly. Her voice wobbles a bit. Even though this animal has been nothing but polite, there's still that undercurrent emotion, that primal instinct, telling her to get away while she can.

The wolf doesn't react to her words. They just sit there, watching her. She wonders what they're thinking; if they're considering her for a snack.

“I'm going to be grounded for the next hundred years, if I ever get home,” Lydia thinks out loud as she pulls herself to her feet. The wolf's eyes never leave her. “Thanks for letting me hide in here. Hopefully, they won't blame you when I end up dead in the woods.”

 _Hopefully you don't eat me when I die in the woods_ , the thought comes unbidden to her mind.

Lydia doesn't even take a step out of the cave when there's a tug on her dress. The fabric rips a little, caught between sharp teeth, but Lydia doesn't mind as much as she should. The dress is ruined anyway. She turns curiously, only to see the wolf staring at her as if she's lost her mind.

“Do you know the way back to the cemetery?” Lydia finds herself asking, wondering if she's truly going crazy.

The wolf gently grips her dress again and tugs, but this time it stands up. The wolf doesn't let go of her dress as it begins walking, forcing a dumbstruck Lydia to follow them. Only once they're down the hill and next to the pond does the wolf release her from their grasp, but it constantly sends her looks over their shoulder, as if making sure Lydia hasn't wandered off. Lydia wouldn't believe it if it wasn't happening to her.

Lydia, not knowing if this creature is leading her to a pack of wolves or the church, dumbly follows, not seeing many other options.

It patiently waits for her as she struggles over rocks and around leaves, and easily helps nudge her free from a bush that seems determined to keep her in the forest forever. Lydia doesn't understand how she could run so far in her hysteric state but is very impressed at just how far she got before stopping. The light in the sky is almost completely gone by the time the wolf and her find the gate she escaped through, owls hooting over her shoulders and things wandering in the underbrush.

Lydia is breathless as the wolf stops near the small opening, unsure if any of this is really happening. Is she dreaming? She must still be back at the cave. There's no way this is possible. She pinches herself for good measure.

“Thank you,” Lydia's voice is breathless.

The wolf, of course, doesn't say anything. It waits until she's on the other side of the fence before turning and running away, not once looking back as it disappears behind bushes and trees. Lydia watches, tiny hands curled into the gate, until she can't see the tawny fur anymore.

She wonders if this is what some people would call a miracle.

When she turns around, she sees lights from police cars at the church, and spends the entire walk back fabricating a story that doesn't feature a very kind wolf.

* * *

When Lydia is officially let off from her grounding, she heads immediately to the library. She pulls every single book she can find off the shelves, searching for anything that even hints at an explanation for what that wolf did for her. None of it makes sense. Wolves haven't been in California in over sixty years.

It makes less sense when she realizes the animal that saved her was actually a coyote.

Coyotes are scavengers. They'll steal dogs out of backyards if the opportunity arises and small children if they're hungry enough. They're clever, Lydia learns, but it doesn't explain how _human_ the coyote seemed, how it looked at her like it understood everything she said. It helped her find her way back to the church instead of eating her. She should be Coyote chow by now.

They're almost always found in a pack, and something in Lydia's heart breaks as she reads that. The den was big, sure, but it seemed like only one living creature had been there for a while before she came along.

The internet doesn't seem to have any answers for her either, and Lydia leaves the library entirely unsatisfied and curiosity far too piqued.

Curiosity killed the cat, sure, but, as she retraces her footsteps, Lydia thinks she might be taking it too far. The woods are easier to navigate now that she isn't scared out of her wits and grieving. It's been two weeks since the service was held for her grandmother, three since her body was cremated. Lydia got to pick out the urn, a very stylish case that she's sure her grandmother would have approved of. They have it stored at the lake house, her grandmother's favorite place to be.

Her mother is happy that she seems to be adjusting so well and Lydia doesn't have the heart to tell her that it's only because Lydia's especially good at distracting herself. Grandma? What grandma? There's a friendly neighborhood coyote running around in the woods. Who needs to think about deceased grandmas?

Of course, Lydia still wakes up in the middle of the night sobbing, but that's an easily ignorable event.

The den is empty when Lydia stumbles upon it, and only now does she clench her nose at the scent. It reeks overwhelmingly of urine. Lydia gags on the smell, has to hide her nose in her shirt and breathe through her mouth. Was she honestly that out of it last time she was here? She wonders idly if the rain hid the smell somewhat, mentally remembering to look into it when she gets home.

Lydia roots around for a few more minutes, only finding a stash of small animal bones and a bundle of clothes. They look old and worn, covered in layers of dirt and grime. Lydia wonders where they came from. There's something in the corner, sticking out from under a jacket. When Lydia reaches for it, there's a dangerous growl from behind her, one that shocks a squeal out of her and makes her want to run for the hills.

She turns to see the coyote from last time, big mouth gaping, back arched violently, and brown eyes angry. It's the most animal that Lydia has ever seen the coyote behave. She backs up slowly, leaving the bundle alone.

The coyote relaxes the farther she gets from it and Lydia mentally writes territorial down in her list of things to know.

“Hi,” Lydia greets, when the growling has stopped and the coyote looks domestic again. “Sorry for being nosy, but you weren't home and I didn't really have anything else to do.”

The coyote stares at her, unimpressed.

“Yeah,” she agrees, “I'd probably be upset if you banged around in my room when I wasn't home.”

Lydia hopes that the coyote will never appear in her bedroom. She can just imagine her father's face.

She slides her backpack from her shoulders, smiling slightly as the coyote's nostrils flair in curiosity. She fiddles with school books and papers before finding the paper bag she packed that morning. Lydia pulls out a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for herself and a pound of turkey meat, fresh from the deli that morning.

“I brought you a snack,” Lydia says as the coyote licks their teeth in anticipation, “To say thanks for taking me home. And, also, to apologize for calling you a wolf.”

The coyote doesn't seem to care much for her reasons, eyes not leaving the package in her hands. She barely has time to rip open the lid and toss it away from her before the animal pounced, attacking the meat like it'll escape or be taken from them if they don't eat immediately.

Lydia eyes the lithe body of the animal, wondering when the last time it ate was.

She relaxes against the wall of the cave and nibbles on her lunch, taking sips of her juice pouch in between bites. The coyote rips into their turkey with a ferocity that is both alarming and adorable. Lydia wishes she had packed her camera, but how would she explain those pictures? It's for the best that no one knows about the coyote. She'd hate to have to make an enemy of the sheriff's son if he got rid of them.

The sun's high in the sky today, and Lydia sighs as she looks up at it, oddly content in this moment. If Lydia had it her way, she'd hide in this cave forever. The coyote is more peaceful to be around than her bickering parents.

“Would you mind terribly if I moved in?” Lydia asks politely.

The coyote doesn't acknowledge her.

“I thought not,” she hums, biting the last bits of her sandwich.

She shakes the crumbs off of her and dives back into her bag. She pulls out a library book that she borrowed, flipping through the pages excitedly.

“I'm trying to figure out what specific subspecies you are,” Lydia informs the beast. “Did you know that animals are broken down like that? It's really interesting. There's around nineteen species that I've been able to find for coyotes, or _canis latrans_. Of course, none of them act anything like you.”

At this, the coyote's ear twitches, but it doesn't react to her beyond that.

“You're obviously a western coyote, or else you wouldn't be in California, right?” Lydia asks out loud. “But you're too big to be any of them. And none of them are as nice as you.”

The coyote looks over at her now and licks at its teeth, revealing the sharp row of incisors to her.

Lydia shakes her head, “Probably shouldn't try to intimidate people after rescuing them.”

The coyote huffs, as if offended.

She goes back to reading, growing more frustrated by the minute. The coyote in front of her doesn't match any of the traits of the species she's reading about. She's almost entirely sure that she was wrong, that maybe the animal in front of her is a wolf, but that can't be possible. She's poured herself over pictures, analyzing the minute differences between each species for hours.

The coyote knocks its head into her shoulder, almost knocking her over. She laughs lightly, watching as they sniff at her bag. Their tail wags slightly and Lydia fights the urge to pet the creature, knowing it'd end with sharp teeth in her arm.

“Sorry,” and she genuinely is, “I didn't think you'd be that hungry. I'll bring some more next time, okay?”

At the promise of next time, that tail really starts flying and Lydia laughs louder now.

“Oh, I see,” she grins, “Just gonna play nice with your meal ticket, hmm?”

She must be going crazy because she swears the coyote nods. She blinks twice, trying to clear her vision. The coyote just stands there and stares at her, long tongue lolling at and turkey breath permeating the air.

“I should get going,” Lydia decides, uneasy. She picks up her trash, her book and shoves them all back in her bag.

The coyote waits for her patiently at the mouth of the den, watching disinterestedly as she packs up. When Lydia's thrown her backpack strap over her shoulder, the coyote begins trotting away, peering back every few steps to look at Lydia. Lydia isn't an idiot even if she _is_ delusional, and begins following the coyote back to the spot in the fence. She hogs the desktop when she gets home, desperately opening link after link, looking for something she can't even begin to understand.

* * *

It's another few days before Lydia can find the time to sneak off into the woods. Her backpack is heavy as she slips in through the hole in the fence. She hurries between trees and around bushes, skin prickling at the idea of another animal finding her, of something other than her coyote called to her by the scent of turkey meat in her bag.

It's only then that Lydia realizes that she's never even heard another animal around the coyote's den. She remembers her readings from weeks ago, about coyotes naturally being drawn to groups of their kind, or a band as Lydia had learned in another book. She entertained the idea of her coyote with a guitar strapped to its back before shaking her head, clearing her thoughts and the bubble of laughter that accompanied it.

She doesn't expect the pair of eyes that watch her as she tumbles out into the clearing, but finds her body warms at the sight of them. Lydia smiles at the coyote lounging in the sun, soaking up the warmth in their fur. She wonders if the coyote has gotten used to her presence, if such a thing can happen with a wild animal.

She watches with a grin as the coyote's nose twitches and then they're up, scrambling to their feet in a disarray of limbs. Lydia laughs at the cold nose that brushes against her arm, the impatient hassling of a muzzle poking at her backpack.

“Relax,” she says, sliding it off of one shoulder, “I promised I'd bring you food, didn't I?”

The coyote seems annoyed at her words but, to Lydia's astonishment, does as she says. They back up a few paces before pointedly sitting down, tail sweeping up dirt. Lydia's jaw drops, staring at the coyote in front of her and wondering if she hasn't just stumbled across a runaway dog. No way could a coyote follow directions like that, could they?

Lydia shoves her backpack all the way off and sits by the pond edge. The coyote gives an annoyed huff before trotting after her, mirroring her position at the pond.

“I brought you three bags this time,” Lydia admits, thinking sadly of the smashed remains of her piggy bank in the trash can at home. “But I can't do this every time I come, okay? You'll eat me out of house and home.”

The coyote doesn't care much for her words as Lydia rips the packaging off of a pound of turkey meat and throws it away from her. She watches in awe as the coyote immediately pounces, flying through the air in a high arch and catching the lunch meat in their sharp teeth. They attack it viciously, tearing into the meal with enough ferocity to remind Lydia that she is, in fact, dealing with a wild animal.

Lydia shakes her head and goes back to her bag, rooting around for the book hiding somewhere in there. It's not a thick book, but the font is tiny and there isn't a single illustration in it. Lydia's teacher was very impressed when she picked this book off of the shelf, even if he did suggest a few other books at a lower reading level. Lydia has a college grade reading level, which is impressive for a 5th grader, as her mother is happy to boast about, and she can tear through the math sheets her teacher gives her with an ease that makes other kids glare at her.

Her counselor has been dying to test her IQ but every time she brings the letter home, her dad just laughs. Lydia doesn't understand why, nor does she understand the furious whispers her parents exchange afterward, but she's begun tossing the letters in garbage bins on the way home.

After a few pages into her book, Lydia begins to feel like someone is watching her. Looking up, she finds the coyote patiently staring at her, head cocked to the side in confusion.

“It's a book,” Lydia shares with her audience. She marks her page and reaches into her bag for the other package of meat, “Like the one I was reading the other day? That one was nonfiction, and this is fiction. I like the nonfiction stories better, but Mr. Salvador says I can't use nonfiction stories for my book reports, which I think is stupid.”

She doesn't toss the meat as far this time and the coyote seems less bloodthirsty as they eat it. When Lydia picks up her book again, though, the coyote's eyes jump to hers. Something in them is calling to her, almost like a dog begging for a scrap of food.

“Do you want me to read to you?” Lydia asks carefully, severely confused. She wonders if she'll ever get used to how the coyote seems to understand her, how it listens and process what she says. Animals aren't supposed to do that, especially wild ones.

The coyote just keeps staring at her, blinking slowly.

After a beat, Lydia nods, “Fine. I need to practice reading aloud anyway.”

They sit there like that, Lydia only occasionally putting her book down to toss the coyote more meat until the sun begins to set. Lydia closes the book with a smile, thinking of the story's hopeful ending, of the powerful message, and begins drafting her book report in her head.

If Lydia didn't know better, she'd say the coyote may start crying. Do coyotes have tear glands? She'll have to consult the internet whens he gets home. For now, though, she can't help but to stretch out her hand and pat the coyote's head, making a sympathetic noise. The story was probably a bit too sad for the young animal. She wonders if they understood the book or could just pick up from the tone of her voice what trials the characters were going through.

She knows dogs do that, understand vocal tones, so it's not too far of a stretch to say that coyotes share the trait, but something nags at her, reminding her that this is not a normal coyote.

It's further proven when she realizes just what she's doing, petting a wild animal as if they're nothing more than a house pet. The coyote doesn't seem to mind the touch, in fact, nuzzling their soft head into her palm, so Lydia refuses to let herself freak out about it. Maybe she should just accept that her coyote isn't anywhere near a book definition of normal.

“I've gotta get going,” Lydia tells the animal, even though she wants nothing more than to stay and nurture this trust that's grown between them. “My mom will ground me again if I'm out after the street lights come on.”

At the mention of being grounded, the coyote becomes all business, impatiently waiting for Lydia to pack up and quickly guiding her back to the fence. Lydia's sure her mom would approve of how respectful her new friend is; if only she could possibly get around the fact that her daughter is best friends with a coyote. Lydia thinks about it the whole bike ride home- her coyote with a collar around their neck and a food bowl with their name on it.

It aches, because as much as Lydia would love that, would love to buy her coyote toys and a bed and take them on walks, it would hurt too much, knowing that she could confine such an amazing animal to the suburbs. She looks back, seeing eyes that follow her until she's out of sight, and feels her body warm. No, she decides. This is good enough.

* * *

Lydia gets an A on her book report. She's sure she heard her teacher sniffling when grading them and feels a pang of delight over moving the old man to tears. She accepts the assignment back with a smile and a strange bubble of excitement, giddy at the thought of telling her coyote.

While the logical part of herself says that the coyote couldn't possibly understand that this is a good thing, the other part of herself, the one that thrives off of evidence and has more than enough of it to make a conclusion, knows that the coyote will be happy for her.

Except the coyote isn't there when Lydia enters the clearing. It's strange for the coyote to be gone but Lydia doesn't think anything of it. It's not as if animals keep schedules, after all, so Lydia heads up to the den and decides to start on her homework. She knows the coyote will be inexplicably put out for not getting the chance to listen to Lydia rattle off multiplication tables and talk about long division.

The coyote seems more eager to learn than the majority of Lydia's classmates. It's odd, but Lydia doesn't question it, just as she learns to not question lots of oddities around her coyote.

It's been almost two months of knowing the coyote, and Lydia's visits have increased to almost daily. After school lets out, Lydia will instantly ride her bike to the grocery store and then the cemetery, where she sneaks into the forest through a hole in the fence. There's a kind pastor who thinks Lydia is just taking a loss very hard, and Lydia isn't going to correct him on that assessment.

Lydia knows it's odd that her best friend is a coyote, knows she's weird and strange and every other name the kids at school call her for only being able to connect with a wild animal, but she refuses to let the general populace and their would-be opinions keep her from doing this. The coyote is important to her in ways that Lydia can't explain. The thought of not being able to see them causes panic to choke her.

Besides, it's not as if the coyote minds her presence. If Lydia was causing them stress or discomfort, she likes to think that she would have quit her visits, moved on and forgot the incident entirely, but the coyote seems to flourish under her attention. They've gained weight and muscle and almost look excited when Lydia comes crashing through the trees. The poor animal must be so lonely out in the clearing. Lydia's looked into it, has called the sheriff's office and consulted with the internet, and learned that there hasn't been a coyote sighting around Beacon Hills in ten years, and even before that they were rare.

Maybe the coyote thinks of her as family. The idea warms Lydia, knowing that she just as easily accepted the coyote into hers.

She's almost finished with her last set of problems when she hears the growl. It's a deep rumble, different in pitch from her coyote's familiar growl. She almost bites her tongue off in surprise, turning quickly to see a large, golden cat slinking around the pond.

Mountain lion, her mind instantly supplies. She gulps, almost chokes on her tongue at the fear that ices her. She has never been this afraid of the coyote, not even on that first day when Lydia walked into their den, but she knows deep in her gut that this animal will kill her without question.

Mind running through everything Lydia has ever learned about mountain lions, Lydia tries to quietly lift her hood. If the animal can't see her neck, it might not attack. She watched a documentary on mountain lion attack patterns on animal planet just last week- funny how things work out like that.

She watches, shaking slightly, as the mountain lion crouches down to drink out of the pond. Tears pool in her eyes as she tries to shuffle deeper into the cave. The mountain lion wouldn't come near something that is so obviously another animal's territory, would it? Lydia just wants a place to hide where she won't get eaten.

She must make a noise, must do something to draw attention to her because the mountain lion's ears twitch. Their head jerks up quickly, cat eyes widening as the animal scents prey. Lydia reeks of fear, she probably smells tasty. The idea has her stomach rolling.

Lydia very suddenly remembers her mother once telling her that little girls shouldn't play in the preserve. Her kind mother who will worry her head off when Lydia won't come home tonight, who will wail and scream and cry at the news that her daughter has been eaten by a mountain lion. The thought sends tears trailing down her cheeks.

She moves to wipe away the tears but stills suddenly, every muscle in her body cramping up immediately. The blood freezes in her veins, her heart stops, and Lydia tries not to breathe.

The mountain lion is huge, far bigger than Lydia had ever imagined. It's body slinks slowly, not in a hurry to catch a meal that can't go anywhere. It's eyes, oh, it's orange eyes, so cold and ruthless, are like a knife twisting in her gut.

The tail swishes excitedly, claws flexing between toes the closer they get. Their incisors are sharp and as long as Lydia's pointer finger. She imagines them tearing into her flesh and a whimper escapes her throat. This seems to delight the animal.

They're at the mouth of the cave, so close that Lydia can see saliva gleaming off of their teeth when a figure comes bounding at them. The shape tackles the mountain lion, sending them both sprawling down the small hill, clutching to each other.

Lydia's eyes widen, trying to think of anything that would attack the massive predator like this but coming up short. She watches, afraid these two animals are fighting over which of them gets to eat her when she realizes what she's looking at.

Her coyote is fighting with a cougar. Their teeth and claws burrow into the flesh of the mountain lion and Lydia watches as the coyote cleaves into the cougar like they're butter. Her hand covers her mouth, feeling like she's going to be sick as she listens to the heated growls and snarls.

It's sickening, watching them fight, fearing for the life of her friend, and her body convulses as she sobs. The cougar strikes out, swiping at the coyote's face and Lydia watches raptly as the coyote jerks down, sharp teeth landing in the cougar's throat.

The mountain lion calls out, voice a warbled roar. It sounds like it's choking. The coyote quickly shakes their head and Lydia hears it, a sharp crack like lightning that sends chills down her spine.

And then it's over.

The cougar stops moving, stops breathing, and their eyes become still and glass-like. If Lydia hadn't seen it happen, she would be sure that this was just a statue.

But she did see it happen, and now, she can see her coyote drop the cougar, can see the blood on their snout and the tongue that licks at their teeth, tasting it. They look back at her, startling her with their too human eyes. It contradicts the animalistic display she just saw and it _scares_ her, but Lydia finds herself running to the coyote anyway. She's unable to stop herself from falling to her knees in front of the animal, from wrapping her arms around their neck and sobbing into the soft fur.

“You saved me,” she sobs, still shaking with fear.

She repeats it again and again, like a prayer, until she feels a soft, soothing rumble from the coyote's neck. A tongue washes against her cheek and all Lydia can smell is blood but her body is too busy buzzing on relief to register it.

“I thought I was gong to die,” she admits and is surprised by the loud growl in her ear at that. Lydia rubs her hand placatingly through the coyote's fur, as if trying to remind them that she's _alive_ , that they _saved_ her.

She doesn't know how long they sit like that, with Lydia's head buried in her coyote's fur and a dead animal not even a foot away, but by the time she stops shaking, the sun has set dangerously below the tree line and Lydia is certain she's only made it out of the frying pan to jump into the fire. Her mom is going to kill her herself.

The coyote finally nudges Lydia to a standing position with their snout and guides her over to the den. They wait patiently while Lydia cleans up her stuff on autopilot, muscles stiff and body tense. She wraps her hand in the coyote's fur, her one anchor to reality, and lets her friend guide her back to the safety of civilization.

She doesn't remember any of her parent's lecture, but she does remember the terrible dreams she has that night, can feel the cougar's teeth in her flesh as she wakes up with a cry. She determinedly returns to the hole in the fence after school the next day, refusing to let this break her, and is surprised to find her coyote is there, waiting to walk her back to their clearing.

The mountain lion is gone and the blood is washed out of her coyote's fur, but Lydia knows she'll never be able to shake that feeling of being prey.

* * *

Things change after that.

Her coyote is always waiting for Lydia at the hole in the fence, lurking in the bushes until Lydia begins climbing through. They spend each visit within arm's length of each other, Lydia always waiting to duck behind her coyote, and the coyote always ready to jump in front of Lydia. If her coyote was human, Lydia would say that the looks they give her would be guilty, as if they feel it was their fault that Lydia almost died.

Lydia doesn't know what to do with that, so she just holds onto her coyote tighter.

They become closer. Lydia never really believed that a near death experience could make a person feel so grateful to their savior, but there are days when she can't focus in class because all she can do is think about the coyote in the woods. For Lydia, this is a very big event.

“I got a B+ on my history test,” Lydia tells them one day, unable to be upset about it as the coyote licks her cheek.

Her coyote makes her forget about everything, about school and her peers and her forever fighting parents. In the woods of the preserve, the world is only Lydia and her best friend, and they can run freely through bushes and swim in the pond without a care in the world. They lounge on their backs in the dirt for hours, watching quietly as the sun slowly treks across the sky, and they relax in the den, her coyote an eager listener as Lydia goes on about science and history and math and reads book after book to them.

Lydia trusts her coyote more than she trusts family members. The days when she would throw food for the animal far away and always keep her distance seem so far away from where she is. She feeds her coyote straight out of her hand, laughing as the tongue slips between her fingers, looking for more, and she often pets the soft fur of their stomach, and occasionally lays her head on it as if they were her pillow.

It goes on like this for years, and Lydia imagines her peaceful bliss lasting forever even as she knows the mortality rates of coyotes. She lets herself play ignorance and live in the moment, lets herself love this animal more than _anything_.

Until she starts 8th grade. Until she walks into middle school with a C cup and lip gloss and people suddenly know her name beyond asking to copy off of her homework. Until Jackson Whittemore invites Lydia to a party at his house and kisses her under the stars.

He asks her to be his girlfriend that night and Lydia blindly, stupidly, madly, accepts.

Everything changes after that. Everything. Lydia was never one for popularity, never thought much about the people who ridiculed her for spending recess in the library and always getting good grades, but she finds that being around people is addicting. She loves it. People suddenly fear her and adore her and love her and Lydia gets drunk on the rush of it. She starts wearing more makeup and uses her dad's credit card to buy nice clothes and curls her hair. She learns to hide her brain behind bright smiles and amazing parties and cute outfits because being smart scares people, and how can you be popular if you're a freak?

Her mother tells her that she's charismatic. Her father calls her attention seeking.

Lydia can't find time to sneak away to the preserve, too busy hanging out with friends and secretly doing her homework and then there's _Jackson_. She's trapped at his house watching MTV or kissing him and wishing she could be in the woods, but that's not normal, that's weird, that's what the old Lydia would have done, so she clenches her eyes tight and kisses him back enough to make him smile.

Jackson and she are the same, Lydia realizes one day as she watches him flex at himself in the mirror. They both thrive on power and will do anything to be the person on top. They love people looking up at them, love the intimidation and adoration and hate. They feed on it. Lydia never knew that this part of herself even existed, possibly would have never discovered it, if Jackson hadn't kissed her that night. She isn't sure if she resents him for it or not.

She stays up until 3 am making sure every assignment is perfect, makes sure that her teachers have no excuse to fail her even though she refuses to answer questions in class. Lydia plays dumb in every single aspect of her life, even though it kills her to text with shorthand and the idea of talking about trivial things makes her want to fall off the Earth and burn up in the atmosphere.

She does it, because the prospect of sitting alone at lunch scares her, because she loves the power and control that she gets from intimidating people, because she feels normal for _once_ in her life.

Living her double life doesn't keep her busy enough to stop dreaming, though, and she often wakes up with tears on her face, feeling lost and lonely and like someone's _taken_ something from her. She dreams of running in the woods and hugging her coyote. The tawny fur haunts her at night and she wishes for nothing more than the strength to tell everyone to get lost and run back to her friend. She feels trapped, torn between her desire to learn and her desire to be on top, and the two parts of her pull and push until she can't even begin to find her way back to the preserve.

* * *

The start of high school brings the end of her parents crumbling marriage, and Jackson can't deal with her pain so he suggests they take a break.

“Just until things cool down, alright?” He suggests with a hand placed lovingly on her cheek, as if he's doing this for her own good.

She saw it coming, is the thing. Both she and her parent's relationships were following a charted course, bound to implode at any second, but the crash landing still hurts. The icing on the cake is when, in a fit of anger, her dad demands that she choose between living with him and her mom.

Lydia can't bring herself to choose either, lungs collapsing under her father's demand, and flees from the house. She runs and runs until her legs burn and her body aches, but she keeps going, needing to put as much distance between herself and her home as possible. Her body carries her there on muscle memory and she slips through the hole in the fence without even thinking.

It's been a year since she's been here but Lydia could make the trek blindfolded. The rain blurs her vision and the mud threatens to trap her like quicksand, but Lydia runs and runs, stepping around trees and dodging bushes with ease.

The clearing is exactly as she remembers it, even if it is dark and raining. The pond threatens to overflow, water sloshing up as the rain pounds down. Lydia steps closer to the den, staring into the pit of darkness with fear that feels like a rock in her stomach.

“Hello?” Lydia calls into the den, voice loud to carry above the heavy rain. “I-it's me.”

There's no answer from the den.

“I need you,” Lydia admits, voice filled with desperation. Her heart aches just listening to herself. “I can't do this without you.”

She almost crumbles there, wants to fall to her knees and let the rain wash over her, but then she hears it. The click clack of familiar nails against stone sends her heart pounding and her face breaks into a smile only to immediately drop.

Her coyote stands at the mouth of the den, but there's no sight of that love or affection that had been there a year ago.

Their body is contorted, back arched and shoulders low. They look like they're ready to pounce on her, jaw wide open and snarling. Lydia has an intruding thought that her head would fit between their teeth nicely. She gulps and backs up, remembering her coyote doing this only once when she was younger. It has to be a mistake, the rain must be throwing off her scent, Lydia probably scared them-

She moves her hand closer to their snout, hoping that they'll be able to smell her and recognize her, the coyote lashes out, teeth gnashing and snapping the air only an inch away from her fingertips. They growl and snarl, and the look they give her is so full of aggression and _hate_ that Lydia feels as if this animal will actually kill her.

Lydia stumbles back in shock and the coyote advances on her, prowling slowly with a drawn out growl that raises the hair on the back of her neck.

The coyote lets out a sharp bark, like that of an angry dog. Lydia feels as if she's being sawed in half. Her hands scramble to hold her middle, trying desperately to keep the pieces of herself together.

“I'm sorry,” Lydia begs, but the guttural growl in response is answer enough.

She walks home with a blank stare and a void inside of her, emptiness making her hollow. She wonders what her life would be like if she hadn't abandoned her coyote, if she had just told Jackson Whittemore to leave her be. She thinks she would be happier.

Her dad doesn't apologize when she gets home. He's moved out before she even wakes up the next morning, leaving empty spaces and open drawers. Lydia looks upon the missing items and doesn't shed a tear, even as she hears her mother sobbing in the bathroom.

The next day, she wakes up to a Pomeranian puppy curled on her chest with a pink collar and a name tag reading _Prada_. There's a text on her phone from her dad that says 'Hope you like her' and Lydia deletes it as soon as she sees it. She clutches the small dog to her chest, buries her fingers in the golden fur, and tries to learn how to breathe again.

* * *

Lydia puts on her makeup and styles her hair and wears perfectly coordinated outfits. She gets an A on every assignment and has her teachers eating out of the palm of her hand when she confides in them her genius level IQ. People watch her walking down the hallway in designer Brian Atwood heels and either hate her or want her, and Lydia smiles at all of them because at least they're looking at her.

Jackson goes out for lacrosse and has a natural talent for it. Lydia designs meal plans and workout regimens and even though Jackson glares at her, he still follows them to the letter, because Lydia is the best and she'll date _only_ the best. She goes to all of his practices and holds up signs at his games and plays the perfect girlfriend while he excels in his role of star jock. She kisses him under the bleachers and they exchange heated vows of love in between classes.

Lydia plays her part and she plays it well. If she can't control every aspect of her of her life she will manage to control most of them. No one can hurt her when she pulls the strings. No one can abandon her when she keeps herself distant. They have her on a pedestal and she's fine with it, more than happy to smile and wave and accept the nomination for homecoming court. She's only a freshman but Lydia has plans, big plans, and within months she controls the school.

Lydia is perfect and perfection doesn't disappoint.

In sophomore year, Lydia meets Allison, the only person to break down the barriers she's erected and forces herself into the part of Lydia's heart reserved for her best friend. It's scary, opening herself up to someone after spending so many years of being an ice queen, but there's something pure and sincere about Allison, something that makes her want to get to know her, and so she does.

Allison brings Scott and Stiles into Lydia's world, and though she knew of the two bench warmers, because Lydia makes it her business to know everyone at their school, she's never talked to them before. Considering they're both social rejects and one of them can't stop drooling over her, Lydia thinks ignoring them was within reason. Lydia loves attention but something about Stilinski reeks of desperation and the fights she gets into with Jackson over him leaving her flowers and asking her out aren't worth stringing him along.

Also, Scott and Stiles are weirder than weird, and Lydia used to be best friends with a coyote so that's saying something. They're obsessed with RPG's and lore and as much as Lydia enjoys mythology, the two of them take it to an extreme that borders on obsession. Allison is genuine and kind and smart and funny and a breath of fresh air that Lydia never knew she needed, so Lydia puts up with her odd tag-a-longs. That's what best friends do, after all. Accept each other's shortcomings.

Except the three of them manage to completely ruin Lydia's carefully constructed life.

Asthmatic Scott McCall, who she kissed in Coach’s office in some desperate attempt to keep hold of the position she's worked so hard for, is a werewolf. He's a werewolf and so is Derek Hale, the man who supposedly locked them all in a school and tried to murder them. He and Derek Hale are werewolves and so is Peter Hale, who stalked her like that mountain lion did once years and years ago, but there was no coyote to save her in the nick of time. Peter Hale who is a werewolf and who left her, bleeding on a lacrosse field, to die.

They are all werewolves, except for Allison who is a werewolf hunter and Stiles, who is blissfully human if not a little bit weird.

Jackson should be a werewolf but isn't. Lydia is immune.

They ruined her life. Lydia has been broken down and remade before and she finds she must do it again, because she can't exist in a world with werewolves and hunters and monsters around every corner if she's fighting for the spotlight. She doesn’t want the spotlight anymore, wants to bleed into the background like she did when she was a child, but she can't go back to that, not now. She adjusts slowly, changing parts of herself and adapting to this world like a species on the verge of dying out. She's a chameleon, changing her skin once, twice, and once more again.

Peter Hale tries to destroy her and she fights her way out of the ashes with a scream that could make ears bleed.

Jackson is a lizard monster turned werewolf who flees Beacon Hills without a backward glance. Lydia finds out that she's a banshee; an omen of death. It's not exactly what ever little girl aspires to become. 

Becoming part of the pack is easy. She slips in between Scott, Stiles, and Allison as if she was always there, like they were saving a space for her in line. They make her heart grow like the Grinch’s and Lydia can't imagine a day where she wasn't surrounded by them, where there wasn't some supernatural force of evil lurking around the corner, where she didn't have them to rely on when things get tough. They're an unstoppable team together, taking down kanimas, hunters, alpha packs, and darachs. They've had a lot of close calls, and a lot of near defeats, but together, they've managed to keep Beacon Hills safe.

“Hunting a coyote shouldn't be too difficult, right, Allison?” Stiles cracks the joke at lunch one day and Lydia's blood turns to ice.

She's late to lunch, busy handing in her extra credit assignment in English, because now that Lydia isn't hiding behind popularity, the idea of Valedictorian is very appealing. She only catches the end of her friend's conversation, but it's more than enough to make her feel as if her world is crumbling around her.

Lydia hasn't thought about her coyote in months. People grow and memories fade. Lydia decided to grow up, to stop living in the past and look to her future. The coyote didn't want her around anyway, they made that painfully clear the last time Lydia had been desperate enough to search for them, but now all she can think about is lazy summer afternoons at the pond or reading as it rained. Her heart aches, recalling how safe and happy she was in that clearing.

“What coyote?” She finds herself asking, voice tinged with desperation.

Scott looks at her oddly, “Stiles and I found one in the woods, camped out near an old car wreck. We think it might have something to do with a girl who went missing a few years ago.”

“You're completely leaving out the part where that thing flashed their freaky blue eyes at you!” Stiles cries, immediately looking sheepish when people from surrounding tables turn to stare at them.

Allison rolls her eyes at Lydia from where she sits across the table, legs gingerly placed in Isaac's lap, “It's weird, right? A shifter coyote? I've been searching through the bestiary all day but I can't find anything like it.”

“Were-coyote,” Stiles butts in hastily.

Lydia's mouth is completely dry but she manages to mumble out, “Yeah. Weird.”

“You okay?” Allison asks, eyebrows stooped low. Her mouth is twisted in a concerned frown, the one she reserves for when Lydia is having banshee problems.

“I'm fine,” Lydia lies, avoiding the looks of concern Scott is sending her. “So, what's the plan?”

It's not her coyote. It can't possibly be, could it? Lydia racks her brain for anything, any hint that her coyote was supernatural or shapeshifting, but if it was, why would it stay as an animal around Lydia for so long? Why hadn't she ever seen them change? It's impossible, Lydia tells herself, so she doesn't see any importance in mentioning it to her friends. She does find herself feeling relieved when Scott suggest getting tranquilizers off of Deaton after school, but that's only because she's an animal rights supporter, right?

* * *

Malia Tate. _Malia Tate._ **Malia Tate**.

The name runs through Lydia's mind like a prayer, over and over again until she can't fathom another thought. Malia Tate, a seventeen-year-old girl who can shift into a tawny-furred coyote, stares at her from across the woods with familiar angry brown eyes; those too human brown eyes that seeped into her soul and made her entire childhood warm. Lydia can't look away from them, can't even bear the thought of blinking and being without them for another second.

Malia Tate is the coyote she cherished growing up.

Malia Tate _hates_ her.

Lydia isn't sure which thought is more important.

Her hair is a brown, matted, tangled mess. Her legs are long, body lean, and Lydia can't stop staring. Her heart stops, entire body still as she stares at the only person who has ever understood her, a complete stranger. She expects her to miraculously pop back into a coyote at any moment, imagines her shifting back into that animal and trotting away back to her den and out of Lydia's life. But she doesn't. She stays human, stays real, and gets taken to Mr. Tate. Because that's where she lives. In a house. Not a den.

Lydia feels the need to vomit and blames it on her adrenaline rush from almost getting her foot cut off. No one blames her.

* * *

Peter Hale is, as always, a petulant child, except he’s a grown man who haunts her nightmares and every interaction with him leaves her skin crawling. So, not a child at all, then. His words are wrapped in silken honey, seduction dripping off his tongue, and Lydia has an urge to spray mace in his face and call it a day. She needs to be here, though, needs Peter to tell her how to control the power he forced on her. She needs him alive.

Allison has no such qualms. Her electric baton crackles in the cool air of the loft, sending the hairs on the back of her neck to the sky. She holds it poised to the column of his throat, eyebrows raised slightly and a question in her eyes, and Lydia has to wonder when her best friend became her lap dog.

“Don't touch her,” Allison’s voice is more dangerous than Lydia has ever heard it. She wraps an arm around her middle to keep herself from shaking, then immediately drops it when Peter’s eyes jump to it, like a carnivore searching for prey.

“I'd love to help you, Lydia darling,” Peter’s doing that thing again, looking at her under his eyelashes like he would give her the world on a platter if she agreed to let him chain her to his feet. “But maybe we could talk in private, hmm?” He cocks his head, the baton sizzling against the stray hairs of a five o’clock shadow growing in, “Away from the animal.”

Allison’s lip twitches in amusement, “Funny. Isn't that what my aunt called you when she burned you alive?”

Peter smiles kindly, but his teeth look sharper than they had a second ago and all Lydia can see is the way they formed like knives before tearing into her flesh.

“You know what? I was too busy listening to the sounds of my dying family, but I will say that she had quite the penchant for the word right before I ripped her throat out.”

Allison’s eyes light up and her mouth drop opens, a sharp retort on her tongue, but Lydia’s quick to cut her off, “Stop it. Both of you.”

Allison’s mouth closes after a beat, but her eyes say more than words ever could. It was probably a horrible idea bringing Allison along, especially when the girl has a thousand reasons to want Peter’s head on a spike. She looks at him as if she could set him afire with just her gaze, and Peter looks back as if daring her to do it.

“All those weapons, all that training,” Peter coos, “None of it did her much good, did it?”

“Stop it!” Lydia screams. She spins and her yell of anger slows down time. Each letter falls off of her lips and sends a ripple throughout the room and Lydia watches, transfixed, as the claws fly from her palm. They embed themselves in an opposing beam with harsh little thuds, one after the next.

As they hit their mark, a vision opens up in Lydia's mind. They flash by her eyes faster than she can process. Colors blur together and words spin like a vortex in her ears, laughter and love and pain, so much pain. Fire licks at her soul, flames cover her eyes, and Lydia feels a scream building in her chest.

She keeps it in, buries it under the smoke, tramples it down and down until the memory recedes and she's flying again, wrung through the tornado like flashing lights until everything stops.

Peter calls her name but it's off, distorted, like a waterlogged machine. Lydia doesn't pay him any attention, too busy focusing, listening for a specific sound.

There. A growl, a familiar one that makes her heart ache before she can even remember where she's heard it. The sound drags her deeper into the vortex. Lydia's eyes open and she sees him, Peter, the younger version of him that has haunted her for so many nights. He's laying in a field, a coyote tucked against his side. Slowly, the coyote changes, fur giving way to skin and claws becoming nails. Lydia watches in a horrified stupor as the animal becomes a young woman, one who looks entirely too much like a girl Lydia's only seen once.

Her stomach is protruded slightly, and the gasp of horror that Lydia makes when Peter lovingly places his hand upon it is enough to pull her back.

“You're not just an uncle,” is the first thing Lydia can get out, the only thought racing through her panicking mind.

She's panting, chest heaving, when Peter grabs her. He shakes her, sharp nails digging into her arms, looking so much like the enraged alpha werewolf from months ago as he demands she tell him everything she knows.

But Lydia can't, refuses to, because it's _Malia_ , and Lydia will do everything she can to protect her coyote no matter what.

Allison wastes no time in attacking. He fries easily and they leave him withering on the loft floor, electricity dancing under his veins. She hopes it stays there, coils under the surface like an itch he'll never be able to scratch. She hopes he remembers it every time he even so much as thinks of looking for that child.

* * * 

Together, they tell Scott and Stiles, and though it's Stiles who first proposes to keep it a secret, it's Lydia who vehemently agrees. Peter Hale, who has a long and terrifying history of manipulating teenage girls for his own personal gain, who would have gladly left Lydia catatonic if only to bring himself back from death, who, despite his claims of redemption, still stares at Lydia with eyes that tracked her across a lacrosse field, still holds himself like he's barely restraining himself from tearing into her again, would have too much fun exploiting and influencing someone as vulnerable and powerful as Malia. 

She wants, so desperately, to protect this girl from the man who has used her body against her again and again. The thought of Peter Hale even breathing in the same direction as Malia makes Lydia physically ill. 

No. She can't know. Lydia feels like a horrible person as she convinces Scott and Allison, but she already knows, deep in her heart, that _she's_ the monster between her and the were coyote and, at least this time, it's for the right reason. 

* * *

Malia checks herself into Eichen a week after Scott turns her back human. Lydia only knows this because Stiles checks himself into the same place after being possessed by an evil trickster spirit. Lydia has little hope of Beacon Hills ever turning back into the quiet town it used to be.

She tries to picture it, imagines the coyote turned girl sitting in group therapy and talking about feelings. The image makes her nauseous, scrambling for the table ledge before the room starts to spin. Her mind refuses to wrap around the idea anytime Lydia tries to accept it, fighting against every ounce of logic that Lydia throws at it.

She even tries to wander back to the clearing, frustrated to find that the hole in the fence has been repaired while she was away. She's not especially good at climbing fences so it takes her a few minutes, and by the time she makes it to the den Lydia is out of breath and panting hard.

The area is marked off; thick lines of police tape cover the clearing like a crime scene. Lydia spots thick tire tracks and footprints, fighting the urge to cry as she sees what's become of her childhood safe haven. Steps timid, Lydia makes the short walk up to the cave and slips underneath the cordoned off area, surprised to find that the den is completely empty. Her coyote- _Malia_ used to have small animal bones and piles of clothes laying around, but the place has been swept clean. It's strange, seeing the place barren. She wonders how Malia would feel about it. Lydia walks to the back of the cave, back bowing as the den gets narrow.

She doesn't remember having to do this as a child.

She sits at the back of the den, ignoring the smell of urine and dirt. It's cool back here, and Lydia relaxes her clammy head against the cold rocks. She stares unseeing out into the mouth of the den, remembering every single laugh and smile she sent the coyote's way. She grieves and mourns for her childhood, for her best friend and the bond she selfishly tossed away. And for what? Lydia couldn't care less about popularity now, Jackson's moved away and they're not even on speaking terms, and most of the school, and the town, think she belongs in Eichen too.

Lydia wishes for nothing more than the warm weight of a coyote in her lap, wants to embed her fingers in the thick fur coat, wants to feel as safe and loved and protected as she always did with her coyote.

The memories are bitter as they fly through her mind, one after the next. It's like someone forced a hot poker down her throat. She wants to do anything else but relieve these memories, but it's useless to try. Even when she's not here in this cave, she can't stop thinking about it lately. This is the only place she ever remembers feeling happy as a child, and it kills her to know that the reason why is rotting away at Eichen.

She could go to her, Lydia thinks. She could go to Eichen and demand to see Malia, could help the girl adjust to being human. The idea fizzles out before it catches fire, killed by the sharp memory of what happened last time Lydia came crawling back to Malia. Her eyes clench tight at the pictures behind her eyes, sharp rows of teeth, aggressive posture. Malia possibly wanted to kill her that night. Lydia doesn't know, will never know.

Malia's face that day when Scott changed her, the angry glint of fire in her eyes. Lydia shudders. No. It's for the best of both of them if Lydia just stays away. Malia doesn't need someone as selfish as Lydia around, she needs people who haven't abandoned her at the drop of a hat. How can Malia ever trust her again? How can Lydia look Malia in the eye and ask for forgiveness? It's easier for both of them to let what they had die than to try to fix it, and right now, Malia needs all the easy she can get. 

Lydia's phone rings, jarring her out of her reverie. 

_'He's escaped_ ' is the only thing Scott sends her, but it's enough to make Lydia's stomach twist in knots. She stands and, with one last look at the den, begins the long trek back home.

She stops at the fence and looks back into the forest, begging, hoping, praying, to go back to the start. Her phone buzzes again in her pocket, cruelly ripping any possibility away from her. 

For now, she has to go help Stiles. 

* * *

An entire lifetime passes as Lydia screams. She screams until it's agonizing, until her vocal chords are raw and her lungs have long since lost air. She screams because if she stops, she'll have to accept it, and if she stops, that means it's real. The scream that's been building in her throat has finally forced itself out and Lydia _refuses_ to let it end.

When it ends so does Allison, and Lydia can't live in a world without her best friend.

The idea of losing someone who clawed their way into her heart again is enough to drive her mad, and the pain in the agony she feels can't exist inside of her. She'll crumble under the weight of this pain, so she screams. She can't stop because then Allison will be gone and Lydia promised herself she wouldn't let that happen.

But it does end, as all things do, and when the scream tapers off, ice grows in Lydia's heart. It grows and spreads until her entire body is crystal, diamond, frozen. Her lungs don't work right and her heart refuses to beat and Lydia swears in this moment, a part of her dies with Allison.

She screams and screams again, begging, pleading, hoping that she can force life back into this girl. Banshees can't do that, though. They predict death, not stop it, and Lydia wants nothing more than to cut out her tongue so she may never scream again.

But Lydia still screams, because that's the only thing she can do anymore.

* * *

Scott and Stiles take Malia under their wing like a little, lost duck. She gets text updates about the situation and any progress Malia is making almost daily. Scott's excited she's picking things up so fast, all things considered. Lydia thinks he's just looking for a distraction.

Apparently, she wants to learn how to turn back into a coyote. Lydia wonders if she's going to run away again, live her life out in the woods with animal skin. She decides it's not her place to ask. She lost that right when she left Malia alone in the woods.

No, Lydia spends her day in a much more productive manner.

Laying around in her bed, wasting days plucking strings and sitting at Allison's grave, begging for _something_. What good is being a banshee if she can't commune with the dead? What's the point of her stupid powers if she can't save anyone? Lydia just wants to apologize to Allison, wants to beg for forgiveness, beg her to come back to life, but nothing works. Lydia knows loss, knows that nothing can make the pain go away, not even time.

Kira comes over a lot. She brings over assignments and takes good notes and she hands them off to Lydia with a wide smile and a shoulder pat.

“I hear Malia's going to start school after Fall break,” Kira mentions one day as they study for their next History test.

“Didn't she turn into a coyote in the 4th grade?” Lydia makes a face. Concern settles unevenly in her stomach. Malia isn't forcing herself to adapt to human life again too quickly, is she?

“That's the weird thing!” Kira's suddenly excited and Lydia feels inexplicably bad for making the girl strictly discuss absolutely nothing but school work for the past week, “My dad says that the school tested her. She must have been super smart before the accident. She has the education of an average 9th grader, and the principle says it's good enough for her to enroll and test out of some classes.”

Warmth pools in Lydia's chest, recalling the many hours spent reading aloud to her coyote and all of the math lessons she took very seriously. She smiles, and Lydia feels so proud of Malia, so happy that she actually did end up helping this girl.

“That’s great,” Lydia finds herself saying, surprising herself by how much she means it.

“Yeah,” Kira grins brightly, flipping a page in her textbook, “Stiles is really happy about it.”

Lydia jerks back, eyebrows crinkled, “Why do you say that?”

“Oh, you didn't know?” Kira suddenly looks guilty, “Stiles and Malia are an item, I guess? It's really unclear, I don't think they know themselves, but she sleeps at his house _every_ night and they're pretty much always together.”

Lydia is having some difficulty breathing.

“Hey, are you okay? I'm sorry, I thought you didn't like Stiles?”

“I don't,” Lydia clears her throat but the words still come out rough. Kira looks skeptical and Lydia forces herself to shake her head, to smile, “That's great. I'm happy for them.” She looks at her textbook quickly, desperate for a distraction, “Um, what were the first two European countries that Germany invaded?”

Kira looks put out at being forced back to studying but answers automatically, as if this information is written behind her eyelids. She does a small happy dance when Lydia deems her answer correct.

She kicks Kira out only twenty minutes later, feigning a headache. The rest of the day is spent critically analyzing why she feels so hurt, only to come up with nothing but her tears.

* * *

Weeks later, when Lydia looks up from her phone, it's into the familiar brown eyes that haunt her dreams.

“Do you remember my fur?” Malia asks her. It shocks Lydia, sending the phone in her hands clattering to the floor. She purses her lips, feeling as if Malia is dangling over a crocodile pit for the fun of it, and crouches down to pick up her cell. Thankfully, it doesn't have any marks on it.

Lydia takes her time standing back up, heart thumping wildly as she tries to process Malia's question. So, they're finally doing this then. Lydia's been waiting for what feels like ever, strung up on her tip toes just waiting for Malia to corner her. She's hardly allowed herself to think about it, and now this wild girl is in front of her, brash and bold and real.

Her hair is in wild knots, matted at the back of her head like she hasn't bothered with a brush since she was a child. She's wearing a loose shirt, probably one of Mr. Tate's, and a pair of sweats. Lydia glares nastily at a pair of older women whispering and pointing in their direction.

Once they've tittered in annoyance and left the area, Lydia carefully turns back to Malia and says, “Yes. I do.”

“Good,” Malia nods, as if this is the best news she's heard in days, “I need your help with something.”

“Is it shopping?” Lydia asks pointedly, working extra hard to keep her voice polite. There's a suspicious stain on Malia's shirt. Is it ketchup? She doesn't want to ask if it's blood.

Malia looks, confused, “Why would I need your help shopping?”

Lydia squints at her, “Well, you've managed to stalk me to the mall. Where I am currently shopping for clothes.”

“Oh. That. No, Scott's given me a bunch of clothes,” Malia smiles, and it's so weird to Lydia. Coyotes don't smile. They manage to look vaguely amused at best. She clutches her purchases tighter to her chest, trying to slow her breathing. “It's my hair. It doesn't- it's not my fur. It feels _weird_.”

Lydia takes in the dark locks, nodding slightly. She understands, somewhat. It's weird for herself to look at Malia and not see the coyote that tolerated her existence. The gold and brown fur has been such a big part of her life, and to see it replaced with dark chocolate hair is unsettling.

It's not Lydia's job to help Malia, a mean part of herself decides. She should just turn around and walk away, leave her to Scott and Stiles to sort out. After all, no one helped Lydia tape herself back together. She had to learn how to live again on her own. She pulled herself out of the catacombs that Peter left in her mind and she fought to take back control of her life. Why shouldn't Malia have to do the same?

She doesn't do that, can't even really entertain the thought as this wild girl stands in front of her, looking so lost and out of place in this store. She belongs in the forest, Lydia thinks sadly. Malia belongs in the woods, in her den, at the pond. There should be dirt in her fur and blood on her teeth. It feels wrong, weird, preternatural, to see her as a human. On two legs. Talking.

“Fine,” Lydia finds herself saying. She puts the shirt she was holding back on the rack and grips Malia's wrist, tugging her behind her like a child. Malia willingly follows her. “I think I know how to help.”

Malia makes exasperated noises as Lydia forces her to put on a seat belt. She fiddles with anything she can reach while Lydia drives, the window button, the radio, Lydia's iPod. If Lydia didn't know better, she would assume this girl forgot to take Adderall this morning, but she does know better, and the sour thoughts leave a bitter taste in her mouth.

When she parks outside of a different store, Lydia demands that Malia stays in the car. She needs time away from her, time to breathe and get her thoughts cleared. Being around Malia is like being a child again, almost like someone is holding her head underwater and blocking everything else out. It's nice in ways and disorientating in others. It takes everything in her to remind herself that Malia is not the coyote she was all those years ago and Lydia is not a child anymore.

Lydia doesn't want to talk about their past. Malia doesn't seem to even think about it unless there's a reason to. Lydia can't tell if she's bitter about it or relieved.

She finds the box of hair dye easily and is happy to find Malia still waiting for her when she returns. Lydia tries to think of a joke, something easy and simple to make conversation, but the words won't form in her mind and syllables get stuck between her teeth. She lets the drive pass in silence, not interrupting Malia as she shuffles quickly between songs.

Lydia's mom isn't home so she doesn't need to make excuses for Malia's existence. Prada yaps loudly about Malia and Lydia watches, astonished, as Malia simply flashes her eyes a vibrant blue at the pup. It sends Prada scurrying out of the room, crying like a child who just saw the boogeyman. Lydia tries to give Malia an annoyed expression but it crumbles under her amusement.

She leads her up the stairs to her home, through the tiny maze that is the hallway, and into her room. Malia stops in the doorway, nostrils flaring as she takes in Lydia's bedroom.

“Is there something dead in here?” Lydia asks, genuinely curious.

Malia shakes her head, “No, it's just your scent.”

Lydia waits for Malia to expand upon that statement. When she doesn't seem inclined to do so, Lydia just shakes her head.

“Come on, we're doing this in the bathroom.”

Malia doesn't question this and follows Lydia along blindly.

The stark light of Lydia's bathroom makes Malia looks pale and sickly. Lydia's stomach turns, wondering what Malia has been up to lately. She tramples down the urge to ask how she's been eating, if she's been sleeping, about how she's adjusting, and instead tells her to hop in the shower.

Malia apparently has zero concerns about stripping down to her birthday suit while Lydia fiddles with the tap. Lydia's cheeks flush and she turns away, focusing on getting the water to the perfect temperature. Malia doesn't have any body parts that Lydia hasn't seen before, both on herself and on strangers. It's not- it was just a shock, she tells herself.

Lydia's not used to a girl who isn't at least a bit insecure about her body. While other girls were going through puberty and having hormones and hating themselves, Malia was trapped with guilt and hiding in the woods as an animal. It's strange for her to realize that Malia possibly doesn't even consider covering her body, probably thinks it's strange that humans wear clothes at all.

Malia reaches for the shampoo right away and Lydia has to fight to not roll her eyes, “Stop. Use the conditioner first.”

Malia quirks an eyebrow at her, “Okay, I know I've been a coyote for a while, but I remember how to take a shower.”

“You have long hair hiding in that rat's nest, I'm assuming?” Lydia asks, uncaring as Malia's eyes narrow slightly. If she can sass a wild coyote then she can damn well give the same treatment to a coyote turned human. “Exactly. Use conditioner first.”

Malia does as she says with only little complaint. When she's doing that, Lydia grabs a hairbrush from her bag and mentally prepares herself for the task that lies ahead. She orders Malia to sit in the tub like a child and props herself on her knees.

“Remember to not claw my face off,” Lydia orders before taking a deep breath and diving in.

It takes an entire hour of growls, grunts, and snarls, but Lydia finally turns the mess of a knot into something that resembles hair. She thinks her shower will never be the same, but Lydia finds herself not minding too much. The claw marks in the tile certainly add character to her boring old bathroom.

“We'll do the rest after your shower,” she suggest, picking stray strings of hair off of her arms.

Malia goes back to showering normally and Lydia props herself on the counter, humming slightly as she waits.

“You're pretty high maintenance,” Malia tells her, not unkindly, as Lydia directs her to dry off. She hands her a pair of clean sweats.

Lydia hums, “Well, it does take an effort to look as perfect as I do on a daily basis.”

Malia doesn't agree or disagree on that.

After she's dressed, Lydia grabs Malia by the shoulders, no small feat considering just how _tall_ Malia is, and has her sit on the toilet lid. She brushes through the hair just as she did earlier, but it's easier now that Malia's had a shower. When she's finished, the wavy locks come almost down to Malia's waist. Frankly, she's surprised they aren't longer. Hasn't this girl been trapped as a coyote for the past nine years?

“Do you want it cut?” Lydia asks, already mentally running through styles in her mind.

Malia shrugs easily, “Do whatever you think is best.”

Lydia grabs her scissors and begins chopping away, remembering sadly that the last time she cut someone's hair, it was Allison's. She had just come back from France, showed up on Lydia's doorstep with her beautiful hair a jagged, hacked mess. She remembers how alarmed she was at the sight, only growing more concerned as Allison began to cry that she just needed a change.

If Malia senses her sadness, she doesn't comment on it. She sits quietly as Lydia works, staring straight ahead at the white wall. If Lydia didn't know better, she'd think this girl a statue, and suddenly pictures a coyote crouching in the bushes for hours in wait for her next meal.

Once Lydia's finished with the blow dryer, Malia looks less of a wild child and more of a person.

Malia surveys Lydia's work in the mirror with a critical look in her eye. Finally, she shrugs, “It's nice, but it still doesn't feel like me.”

“I'm not done with you yet,” Lydia says, forcing the girl back to her spot on the toilet lid.

They don't talk while Lydia straps a towel around Malia's shoulders, mixes dye, and straps on gloves. Malia doesn't ask questions or jerk away, but she does make a face at the smell of the dye. Lydia finds herself missing the endless conversations with Allison as she paints the dye on Malia's hair, but decides that this quiet is comforting as well.

“You're sad,” Malia says, blunt as per norm, when Lydia steps away to inspect her work. The words fall out of her mouth like she's been holding them on her tongue for a while, like she had to taste the words first.

“Yeah,” Lydia admits easily, shocking herself. She usually holds things like this close to her chest, even when it's Scott who scents out her emotions.

Malia's quiet for a second, face troubled.

“Is it because I didn't say thank you for the haircut?” She asks quietly, only genuine curious in her tone.

“No,” Lydia says quickly, surprised that the girl seems to care. “I just haven't done anything like this with anyone since Allison.”

“Oh,” she says. She nods, easily accepting this.

Lydia knows that grief isn't a new thing to Malia. She wishes so desperately that she knew what had happened to the girl all those years ago, that she could have helped somehow, but what could she have done? She was a child, one who knew nothing about the supernatural that surrounded her at that. All she could do was be Malia's friend, and she obviously didn't do that right.

Malia came to her for this, though. Malia must trust her a little bit, right?

Lydia doesn't feel like questioning it.

Malia, frankly, looks ridiculous in a shower cap and a serious expression, but Lydia doesn't know how to laugh with this new version of her, so she just sits on the counter and waits for the time to pass by. There are so many things she wants to ask, about Malia starting school, about her relationship with Stiles, about how she's adjusting to everything, but her mouth feels sewn shut and the words get jumbled around in her head. When it's time to rinse, Lydia leads her over to the shower and helps her rub in the conditioner and wash her hair.

She blow dries it for her, biting her lip to keep from smiling at the wild mess of hair they've created. Malia looks like a wet dog. She suddenly wishes fiercely that they were still friends, wishes she would know how Malia would react if she joked about it. Instead, she keeps her smiles to herself.

Malia's face is awestruck as Lydia brushes it out, brown eyes wide and mouth dropped slightly.

“It's perfect,” Malia breathes, staring at herself in the mirror.

Her brown hair now has bright streaks of blonde in it. If her memory is right, which it usually is, then it's a perfect ode to the tawny fur of Malia's coat. Malia looks more like herself now, less like a wolf in sheep skin.

Lydia doesn't think she's ever seen the girl look so happy.

Malia smiles at her, and it's beautiful and dazzling and nothing like anything Lydia could have expected. She thanks her quickly and then she's gone, bounding out of Lydia's house with an excited grin and eager footsteps.

Lydia falls against the counter as she hears the front door slam, trying to work through feeling like she's been hit over the head with a cinder block. She stays for twenty minutes, just smelling the scent of something wild in her bathroom, like the forest after it rains, like something you want to drown in.

She's missed it.

* * *

Lydia's mom doesn't force her to go back to school until after Fall break. As much as she complains about being forced into clothes and sent to school, Lydia is sort of grateful for the push. She doesn't think she would have ever gone back if she was given the choice.

Walking past Allison's locker is painful and sitting in their shared classes is an exercise in insanity. Lydia keeps expecting to look over her shoulder and see the smiling girl waiting for her, but she's never there and Lydia continues being alone. Scott, Stiles, and Kira are happy to have her back, swarming around her as soon as they see her in the hallway. Lydia hugs them all extra tight, regretting how she's tried to block them out the past few weeks.

“You're still in the running for valedictorian,” Scott assures, “But a few people are ahead of you.”

“Don't worry,” Stiles swears with an evil grin. She's relieved it looks nothing like the nogitsune's wicked smirks. “We'll convince them to miss a few assignments. That oughta level the playing field.”

“Please,” Lydia says, feigning confidence, “Like I won't be able to beat Danny and Harley on my own.”

The boys smile at her, just happy to have her back. Kira knocks their shoulders together, face tight, “I think I left some of my notes at your house last week. Did you bring them by any chance?”

Lydia has no idea what she brought to school today. Her mom grabbed anything that looked school related, shoved it in a large purse, and pushed Lydia out the door. With an apologetic shrug, Lydia says bye to the boys and leads Kira to her locker, hoping to find whatever stray notes Lydia needs to return.

Kira's a bubble of nervous energy all the way down the hallway, avoiding Lydia's eyes and clutching her books tight to her chest.

“What's wrong?” Lydia asks, voice a frustrated grunt when they get to her locker. Lydia spins in her combination and roots around in her bag, saying, “You look like I'm about to sta-”

The words get caught in her throat, images of Allison getting stabbed flying by her eyes. She swallows them down and takes a deep breath, before forcing herself to put her books in her locker.

“I-I don't actually need my notes. I photocopied them before I brought them over to you,” Kira says, looking sheepish. She fidgets with her book, “I just need to talk to you if that's okay?”

“Of course,” Lydia's response is immediate, thinking of just how many times she's allowed herself to cry on Kira's shoulder the past few weeks. She smiles and tries to make it encouraging or supportive, but she's unsure if her face knows how to make those expressions anymore.

“It's about Scott. I wish I could say something to him,” Kira admits, and Lydia can see a small sheen of tears covering her eyes, “I wish I knew _what_ to say to him. I didn't know Allison like you guys did,” at the sound of her name, Lydia instinctively looks to the small whiteboard she keeps in her locker, heart clenching at the small note written from Allison hanging there. “I don't know how much time or space I'm supposed to give him. I want to be there to support him, and all of you, but I don't know what to do, you know? I mean, I know I'm still just the new girl at school...”

Lydia hears a familiar voice from behind and turns quickly, just in time to see coach and Malia heading down the stairs.

Coach has a stack of papers in his hand and Malia has a backpack strapped across her back. Her hair shines in the sunlight that seeps in through the window and Lydia smiles at the gentle cascade of waves, happy that Malia has continued to take care of it. They're talking about track, about Malia's muscle definition. Lydia watches them walk past, surprised to see Malia for all of two seconds before she remembers Kira telling her she would be starting today.

“I sometimes ran from cougars trying to eat me,” Malia says coolly, and Lydia tilts her head at the lie, recalling this very same girl tearing a mountain lion to shreds just to save her.

The motion must alert Malia to her presence because suddenly Lydia has very distinct brown eyes locked onto hers. There's no hate or anger in them, nothing mean in her gaze; there's just familiarity, as if she's remembering the same event that happened so many years ago, like they're recollecting silly memories together.

Lydia wants to go to her, to tell the coach that she'll take over the tour. She wants to help Malia to all of her classes and show her how to work her locker and protect her from curious stares and mean teachers, but Lydia can't force herself to move. All she can do is stare at the girl as seconds tick by, wishing and waiting for the courage to go to her.

It never comes.


	2. Visions are seldom as they seem

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry for the wait!!!!

Malia adjusts as well as can be expected to a school setting after being a coyote for the past nine years, which is not well at all. The first few days, teachers are lenient and understanding. Malia doesn't seem to remember that you have to raise your hand before speaking or ask to go to the bathroom. She jumps every time a bell rings, no matter how many hours Scott has spent with her on focusing her hearing. Her actions run very closely to instinct. If she's hungry, she'll eat in class. If she's tired, she'll take a nap on her desk. Lydia once saw Malia snarl at a boy who asked if he could have a stick of her gum.

By the end of week two, Malia has three detention slips and enough tardies in her permanent record to warrant concern.

Lydia thinks that the only reason they haven't kicked her out of school is the fact that Malia very diligently turns in her work. Overall, she's a good student. She studies harder than half the kids in all of her classes, asks questions when she doesn't understand something, and answers them when she does. She's even tested out of the majority of required freshman classes. It hurts for some reason, watching Malia try so hard and still fall short of what people expect of her.

Lydia has to stop herself from walking Malia to all of her classes and demanding that her teachers treat her with respect. Stiles tells her that some of them have begun to throw her curve balls on purpose.

“And, get this, the principle thinks she's ready to take the high school exit exam!” Stiles' voice is filled to the brim with frustration. Lydia's never seen him so angry, which is odd considering just how many life and death situations he's been in.

“Well,” Lydia says carefully, “The test _is_ written at a sophomores curriculum, which Malia is at now.”

Lydia does get the point of what Stiles is saying, though. Malia's been placed in Lydia's AP Biology class simply because the other Biology class was too full. It's supposed to be temporary until they can shift a few people around, but Lydia knows how slow her public school works and Malia still looks swamped under the course load. Any rule she ever had with her coyote is gone now, and Lydia doesn't know if she's allowed to offer this human version of her help; she has zero idea as to how Malia would take the offer, so she decides to stay silent.

If Malia gets a question hurled her way, though, Lydia is quick to intercept it. She's very good at making teachers annoyed, which is one of the reasons why she doesn't get called upon in class often, and manages to humiliate Mr. Braun enough to leave Malia alone most days. It's all she can allow herself to do without feeling as if she's crossed a line.

“I know,” Stiles grunts, running a hand through his hair, “It's still just really messed up, you know?”

Stiles looks sadly over at the lunch line, watching as Malia, Kira, and Scott grab their food. Malia looks delighted at the sloppy joe mixture for today's meal. Lydia watches, vaguely amused, as Kira feigns Malia's enthusiasm. Scott stifles a laugh into his shirt collar.

“Yeah,” Lydia agrees sadly, “I know.”

“Anyway,” Stiles turns to face her, hands moving so fast he almost slaps himself in the face, “I was thinking. You, me, Scott, Kira- we all tutor her!”

Lydia raises a skeptical eyebrow at him. As much as Lydia's wanted to help Malia, their past isn't the only thing holding her back from making an offer. Last week she heard Stiles and Malia furiously arguing over Malia refusing to accept help, the girl stubbornly insisting that she wanted to do this on her own. Lydia felt sort of proud of Malia in that moment, even though she thought her refusal for help was just silly.

It's something Lydia would do, though, so she can't throw too many stones.

“She'd never accept that,” Lydia points out the obvious as she takes a drink of her milk.

“I know, I know,” Stiles grumps, “Which is why I'm proposing a _study group_. You, me, Kira, Scott, Malia. Studying together. If Malia gets help out of it, well, that's a good thing, right?”

Lydia looks across the cafeteria, watching as Malia takes her time deciding between chocolate milk or regular milk. Her eyebrows are furrowed, a fine line crinkled in between. Her hair is braided into a neat side braid, and Lydia is impressed to find that there are only one or two misplaced hairs that she can see. It took Lydia months to french braid without messing up. She's lost track of how many tutorial videos she watched, how many times she begged her mom to teach her.

Malia finally decides on chocolate milk, and the smile she gives the lunch lady as she pays for her food is far brighter than anyone has any right to on sloppy joe days.

“If Malia needs help, she knows how to ask for it,” Lydia decides, watching as Malia anxiously searches the cafeteria for their table. Her eyes light up when they focus on Stiles and she quickly begins nudging and stepping around people to get to the table sooner. All she can see is a coyote snarling at her, jaw stretched wide and teeth sharp. Lydia shakes her head and looks at her companion, “And Stiles? Malia's the type of person who only trusts someone once. Don't break that, alright?”

Stiles, looking more serious than Lydia has ever seen him, nods at her. His jaw is clenched, shoulders broad, and, for the first time, Lydia can see the man he's becoming. It's odd. She feels like just yesterday he was the goofy kid with a shaved head and big ears, always losing his nerve before handing her flowers and teddy bears, leaving notes in her locker and fawning over her existence.

She watches him relax as Malia takes a seat beside him, the way he smiles at her makes the corners of his eyes crinkle. Malia smiles giddily back at him, and though they don't kiss, Lydia can see that it would be the perfect moment for one.

Lydia eats her lunch and reminds herself that she's happy for them.

* * *

It's three more weeks before Lydia gets invited to join a study group. She's pleasantly surprised that Stiles took her words to heart for so long. She agrees to help with the idiotic plan, mainly because explaining her refusal would take too much time.

Malia's face attempts a smile as Lydia enters the Stilinski house, sitting at the dining room table as if the seat has her name on it. If what Kira says is true, Lydia wouldn't be surprised to find it carved somewhere on the wooden surface. She looks nervous, Lydia notices, and she tries to send her an encouraging smile back, unsure if her mouth makes the proper movements. It's awkward in the house, and Lydia curses her own punctuality as she realizes she has shown up before Scott and Kira.

“I brought snacks,” Lydia says, holding the bag of chips out like it's a peace offering. Stiles slinks in from the kitchen faster than she's ever seen him move in his life with a satisfied grin. He scurries back tot he kitchen, chips in hand, ignoring her cry of, “Those are for everyone!”

“He's making lunch,” Malia tells her, hands folded politely over the other as she sits at the table. Her bag is next to them, books and paper falling out of the opening like a cornucopia. Lydia eyes the many highlighters with concern.

Lydia peers around the corner quickly, surprised to see that Stiles is, in fact, making lunch. The last time Lydia was at the Stilinski house, there was only a few stray remnants of fruit left in the fridge, lined mostly with bottled water and dried snacks. It's no secret that Stiles and his dad survive mainly on fast food, even if Stiles makes sure to spring for the healthier places. Lydia didn't even know that Stiles _knew_ how to make a sandwich.

Lydia's eyes narrow at the bag of turkey Stiles is taking meat out of, watching in frustration as he slips them between two slices of bread. He's making turkey sandwiches. Lydia clenches her eyes shut and takes a deep breath out of her nose, trying desperately to ignore the jealousy wrapped tight around her chest. She tries to stop the mental, childish whine before it even has time to form in her mind, but there's a small ten year old inside of her crying because turkey was _her_ thing.

“Are you okay?” Malia asks.

Lydia turns to find her openly staring at her, mouth tight. She only has a few seconds to think proudly on how far Malia's come in the past few weeks, recalling the last time Malia asked her about her emotions, before snipping, “It's an invasion of privacy to scent peoples emotions. I find it hard to believe Scott hasn't taught you that yet.”

“I have,” comes a hurt voice from the doorway. Lydia turns to see Scott standing there, shoulders squared and a pack of sodas hanging by his finger, “But you can't really blame her. You're sorta projecting anger right now.”

“I am _not_ ,” Lydia says emphatically. Embarrassment licks like flames at her cheeks. If only she had stomped foot, it would have been the perfect ode to ever bratty child in the world.

Because that's what she is, suddenly. Seeing evidence of how close Stiles and Malia are has regressed her to that of a four year old, and it infuriates her almost as much as the stupid lunch meat itself. Too many people are looking at her like she's a trip wire about to be set off and it makes Lydia curve in her shoulders.

She rips the sodas from Scott's hands and stalks into the kitchen, not even looking in the direction of Stiles. She tugs the fridge open with more force than required and puts the case of sodas in, grumbling about how warm soda is twice as fast at eating away at enamel.

Stiles' mouth opens, and he has this look in his eye like he's concerned and about to ask if she's okay. Lydia is quick to cut that off with a sharp glare that sends him scurrying back to his sandwich making duties. Sandwiches. Who makes sandwiches to study?

Her eyes catch on the familiar logo and suddenly Lydia's already bad mood has soured like an apple. It's even the same _brand_.

Lydia knows that she's being stupid and dramatic and childish but she can't _help_ it, can't keep a lid on this bizarre anger that courses through her veins. Malia doesn't even acknowledge how important her existence was to Lydia when she was a kid, or even how deeply Lydia regrets every single day she didn't go back to Malia's den. Malia acts as if their time together wasn't even a blip on her radar, like Lydia was just an annoying fly who hung around in between meals.

Lydia doesn't even know what she _wants_ from Malia, be it acknowledgment or anger, she just knows that there's this bundle of emotions inside of her that grows every time she looks in the girls direction, that it sometimes feels like a black hole, threatening to swallow her whole. Sometimes, all she can think about is that Malia hasn't even mentioned to Stiles or Scott that she used to know Lydia, and while Lydia has her own reasons for keeping that a secret, Malia has _none_. Sometimes she stays up late at night, counting all the reasons Malia would have for hiding their shared past like dirty laundry, and the number she manages to come up with is frightening.

It's wrong of her to feel this way, and Lydia knows that with her entire being. She has no claim to Malia. She tossed Malia aside like she was nothing, and Malia deserves to be surrounded by people who are as loyal and protective as she is. If Malia wanted Lydia in her life, she would have said so, as blunt and bold as the girl is.

Lydia sits at the end of the table, feeling two sizes too big, wrought down with her emotions. Malia and Scott avoid her eyes from their end of the table, talking about supernatural stuff that Lydia could never begin to understand. She sits there feeling sorry for herself for the next five minutes, her small introspection interrupted by Kira's timid knock on the door and tries desperately to force it from her mind as Stiles brings a tray of sandwiches into the room and a bowl of chips.

“Oh,” is the first thing Kira says, “I didn't know there would be food?”

“Stiles can't study unless he's eating,” Scott's voice is far too fond.

“More like he can't study unless he has something in his mouth,” Lydia mumbles to herself, feeling both surprised and pleased at Scott and Malia's undignified laughter. It feels weird to acknowledge that Malia has spent enough time with Stiles to be able to laugh at his oral fixation but she tries to not let it dampen her already bad demeanor.

Maybe she should just go home. Lydia eyes the front door, considering how successful an escape attempt would be.

“I can feel you making fun of me,” Stiles humphs from the kitchen. He comes back precariously juggling an armful of sodas that Lydia knows haven't had enough time to cool off properly. “Excuse me for being a gracious host.”

“You're the hostess with the mostess,” Scott assures him with a kind smile. Stiles almost drops a soda on his own foot trying to high five him.

Lydia rolls her eyes at the two of them, wondering why she even agreed to come to this charade. She turns away from the door and attempts to relax into her chair.

Kira sits down next to Scott, the two of them sharing some very sweet eye contact that says more than any words could. Lydia watches them sadly, remembering how it was only months ago that her best friend was in that position. Lydia shakes her head to clear the thought. It's not fair to Scott, Kira, or Allison to think like that.

“Alright,” Stiles claps his hands together excitedly, drawing attention to himself, “Thank you all for coming to the first meeting of the SWNHAH club.” At the blank stares he receives, Stiles quickly clarifies, “Supernaturals who need help at homework. God, you guys have no imagination.”

Lydia smiles unkindly, “If this is a supernatural club then what are you doing here, Stiles?”

Her eyelashes bat innocently, as if acting on muscle memory.

“I think being possessed by a nogitsune gives Stiles a pass,” Kira says lightly. She fiddles awkwardly with her pen.

Stiles, shaking off the mildly hurt look on his face, sticks his tongue out at Lydia and she, acting the part of mature adult, restrains herself from showing him her middle finger. Scott goes back to giving her concerned looks.

“Uh,” Malia leans forward, brows furrowed, “Are we going to actually study? Maybe?”

“Right!” Stiles crows as he leans forward to grab a handful of chips. “Any idea what we should study first?”

“Definitely not math,” Malia practically growls.

Lydia's arm hair stands straight at the familiar noise and she barely contains a shudder.

“That's sorta the point of study groups,” Scott explains gently, a smile on his face, “You get people around you to help you with things you're having problems with in a fun way.”

Lydia can practically see Malia absorb the words. Her eyebrows crinkle slightly and her eyes go intense and focused, like they would when she spotted something in the distant forest. She finds herself leaning forward unconsciously, something inside of her begging to see the look up close like she did when she was a child.

Malia blinks though, and the face is gone. She's back to being a teenage girl and Lydia jerks so suddenly she almost falls out of her chair. Lydia scowls to herself, pleading mentally to just be normal for this one day.

“So, math?” Malia asks the group, looking apprehensive at the thought.

Kira is quick to jump in, “Or! We could ease into it, if that would make you feel better? I'm having some trouble with an English essay.”

Malia seems to relax at Kira's suggestion, and if Malia were the type, Lydia thinks she would send the girl a thankful grin. Lydia shakes her head to herself, wishing that talking to Malia could be that easy for her. She wishes she never knew the girl when she was younger, wishes she didn't have memories of running between trees or dreams of soft fur. It would be so much easier to get to know Malia if she didn't already know her.

Malia is surprisingly really good at English. Her blunt words and mind that sees no gray area makes it easy for her to form opinions and arguments. Lydia leans over Kira's shoulder and suggests prose and shifts sentences around to help it flow better. Stiles, who has the same English class as Kira, gets help from Scott under Lydia's supervision, since the last time Scott and Stiles did homework together they ended up ten topics away and six hundred words over the maximum word count.

It was an impressive essay, but it had very little to do with Napoleon.

“Do you have any English homework?” Malia asks, and it takes Lydia a full minute to realize the question is directed at her.

It shocks her almost as much as it did that day in the mall. She's lucky she's not holding something, or else it would surely have broken against the floor in Lydia's surprise.

“Um,” Lydia starts, which is enough to cause Scott and Stiles to trade a sharp look. Lydia Martin never stammers. “No. We're doing presentations on famous poets this week and I've already presented.” The words feel stilted in her mouth. She tries to remind herself just who she is, the girl who once made am eighteen year old football player cry while smiling at him, but all it does is twist her once silver tongue even more. It's as if she's never talked to a person before. “Do you?”

“We're doing autobiographies,” Malia shrugs, fiddling with a highlighter, “I didn't think it'd be a good idea to write a paper about me being a coyote, so I'm just taking the F.”

Lydia frowns, “That's going to negatively affect your grade, you know?”

“I'm not stupid,” Malia scowls. Her eyes narrow, back tensing like she's ready for a fight.

“I didn't mean it like that,” Lydia says, hating everything about this and them and how they are. She wishes furiously that she could skip all of this, get to the part where every word isn't a land mine and there isn't an ocean of distance between them. “Have you talked to Morrell? Ask her to write you a note saying that you're too traumatized by your tragic past to do the assignment. Your teacher will probably excuse it and then the zero won't hurt your grade.”

The room is quiet for a minute.

“It's not a bad idea,” Scott says, shooting Lydia a relieved grin.

“Yeah,” Stiles nods, “I'll take you by the counseling office tomorrow at school. God knows Morrell owes us one, right?”

Lydia bites her lip to contain her smile, inexplicably happy at the group's reaction to her idea. It's silly. Lydia has had thousands of ideas before and has never felt so pleased to have them accepted. In some way, she's just happy to have helped Malia, at least a tiny bit.

Stiles is doing some odd twitchy thing, like he's suddenly lost control of his facial muscles. Lydia is concerned for all of two seconds before there's a loud bang from underneath the table, like someone's kicked it, then another, louder one, immediately following it. Stiles squeaks out a high pitched peal of pain at that and Lydia turns just in time to catch Malia's pleased smirk.

“Not progress,” Stiles hisses between clenched teeth. He gives Malia a venomous look, “Definitely not progress.”

* * *

That night, Scott texts her to ask if she's okay. Lydia throws her phone to the floor and buries her face in her pillow, unable to understand why she is so completely and overwhelmingly _not_.

* * *

They aren't prepared for it, is the thing.

Werewolf lore is all over the place. Lydia remembers three episodes of Scooby-Doo that featured werewolves. Growing up, there were tons of movies that mentioned werewolves. They were just _there_ when she was a kid, just a spooky story that everyone knew the rules to.

A man turns into a wolf on the night of a full moon. It's a simple thing to remember. When someone is a werewolf, the idea of a full moon is just a logical conclusion to jump to. Stiles has told her that Scott's first full moon was horrifying, and Lydia knows from personal experience that it turned Jackson into a murderous puppet.

Werewolves and full moons are just a thing to be expected. When one thinks werewolf, they immediately think of the moon, too.

Coyotes and full moons? Not so much.

“You're sure they haven't seen her?” Scott asks, for the fifth time in the past hour. “There've been no sightings?”

“Yes, Scott,” Lydia puts extra effort into sounding patient. She knows Scott is under a lot of stress right now, mostly for things he piles on his own shoulders. Lydia may be more forgiving if he he hadn't asked her the same question five times in the span of an hour. She doesn't know when he got it into his head that he's responsible for Malia, but the idea has been planted and grown roots. “I think I would notice if I head about a coyote running around Beacon Hills.”

Malia disappeared sometime before six AM this morning with no note and no noticeable trace. It's a Friday, so no one had any qualms about skipping to form the search party. Scott and Derek have ran multiple circuits throughout the town in hopes of catching a scent, but if there ever was one it has long since faded. At first, Scott thought it was a new enemy, picking the pack off one by one, but as the day grew on and he and Derek became more and more agitated, everyone slowly realized that there is a full moon tonight. From there, it was simple guesswork and lots of hoping.

Stiles and Kira are in the jeep, searching up and down every street, sidewalk, and alley they can think of for hide or hair of Malia to no luck. Scott and Derek have taken to the preserve, where they can shift freely and look at the same time.

Lydia is stuck manning the phones. Kira can wield a sword and has untested strength, so she's taken Lydia's place on the front line. Lydia's not too upset. What would she do if an out of control coyote came at her? Scream at it and tell it it could potentially, possibly, maybe die soon?

Besides, she tells herself, if Malia saw her in her current state, she would possibly just maim Lydia and feast on her organs. Lydia still remembers the last time she saw the coyote, the way they snarled and snapped at her outstretched hand.

Yes, she decides. Flipping between police frequencies is clearly the better choice for her.

“Get back to looking,” Lydia orders briskly, “The sooner we find her the better.”

There's a pause, like Scott's rolling words around in his mouth, and Lydia is quick to hang up the phone, not at all emotionally prepared for any heart to heart Scott McCall feels like wringing out of her. He's been trying to corner her for an entire week, but Lydia's sneaky and has dated two supernatural creatures in the course of her life. She's managed to avoid being alone with him thus far. He's a werewolf, a true alpha one at that, so Lydia has little hope of her avoidance maneuvers working for much longer, but she likes to live in denial these days.

She shoves her phone in her pocket with more force than strictly necessary and gets back to work, scouring the internet for anything that could help. The main problem is that they don't know if Malia has managed to turn into a full coyote, or if she's just extra hairy like werewolves get. There's nothing about it in the Argent bestiary, the only item left in the Argent loft when Scott and Lydia went to go check on Chris and Isaac, and absolutely no search results online. If Lydia didn't see Malia on a day to day basis, she would be certain that shifter coyotes aren't a thing.

There haven't been any reported murders or suspicious activity so far. It's almost like a regular night, back before all of this supernatural business took the town by storm. Lydia counts backwards on her fingers, surprised to realize that this is the first full moon in months where they aren't struggling against an enemy.

It's an odd revelation. Lydia makes a mental note to share it with everyone once things have calmed down again. She just fears she won't get the chance.

Lydia's been prey before, hunted a few too many times in her short life. She's intimately familiar with the sensation by now, the prickling of her flesh, the hair standing on end, the feeling like she has eyes in the back of her head that have inexplicably gone blind. Her stomach twists, nerves standing at attention, and Lydia very suddenly regrets so hastily hanging up on Scott.

Her keys are a heavy weight in her pocket and she fights the urge to grasp them with shaking fingers, keeps mindlessly tapping away at the keyboard even though the only thing in her search bar is ' _how do coyotes reacthghasdn aisjwe d;f'sddsi wasdfijw_ '.

She struggles to appear normal, to keep her eyes staring firmly on her screen while she buys herself time to come up with a plan that won't get her killed instantly. It's vastly harder than it looks, and Lydia feels a pang of remorse for every horror movie woman who she has shaken her head at for screaming like her head has been cut off.

When fear is like ice in your veins, when it wraps around your heart and _squeezes_ , it's hard to remind yourself that you're not already dead.

Can Malia see her hands shaking? Is she listening to her heart flutter like a hummingbird in her chest? Lydia swallows thickly.

Her car. Her car is parked in the garage, which can either be a good thing or a bad thing, considering how Malia attacks. Her mind races, forcefully pulling up every single page of the hundreds of books she read as a child, so desperate back then for answers she didn't even know the questions to.

Coyotes are opportunistic, she recalls. They lay and wait for a chance to strike, and when they do, they go hard and fast, never giving their prey a chance to fight or flee. She's personally watched Malia crouch in bushes for hours, waiting for rabbits to come out of their holes or for squirrels to come down from their trees.

She just can't give Malia an opening, then. Great.

It's hard to come up with a plan when it feels like there's a knife to her throat, but Lydia has worked miracles under harsher circumstances, and when she springs from her chair and races for the door, she likes to think she has gotten the jump on Malia. Her window cracks, glass breaking easily under the force of Malia's body and Lydia wastes precious seconds closing her bedroom door behind her. Any barrier between her and that beast feels like a success.

She stumbles on the stairs, panic making her muscles weak and her eyes can't seem to focus on one thing. A vacant part of her mind wonders where Prada is, but she's quick to push that thought away. She can't afford to have it if she wants to make it through this alive. Her blood pounds in her ears, almost loud enough to block out the sound of Malia's vicious howls, of her throwing herself at Lydia's bedroom door over and over again, like an animal caught in a trap.

Her eyes clench tight at the noises, heart breaking because this is _Malia_ and she wants to rip into Lydia's body and _kill_ her. She hesitates at the bottom of the stairs, stomach trying to climb up her throat. The room spins and adrenaline makes her see in double for a few seconds.

The door cracks and splinters like a bullet in the silence of her empty home. She freezes for all of two heartbeats, long enough for Malia to appear on her balcony and snarl at her. Her face is twisted, forehead too big and preternatural blue eyes too deep and Lydia knows somewhere inside of her that this face will star in her nightmares for weeks to come. Her jaw opens, wider than humanely possible, and Lydia sees sharp, gleaming fangs that shine brightly in the well lit foyer.

Lydia has survived too many horrors to make such a simple mistake like attempting to reason with an out of control supernatural creature but, god, something in her _begs_ to. Words bubble and pop in her throat, half formed sentences rearrange themselves on her tongue. Her blood is a thousand apologies and none of them are good enough. She wants to ask Malia to slit her throat, let her sorries spill across the marble floor so that her coyote can finally see them.

She doesn't do any of that, though. Lydia grips her keys tight in her pocket and bolts for the garage door. Never in her life has she been more thankful for her homes' floor plan, of the brilliance in the design of having her garage door exit into the foyer. She grips the door handle hard and rips it open, knowing that Malia is only a few steps behind her.

 _This is not Malia_ , she reminds herself, hearing the yowling yips of pain as fingers get caught in her heavy garage door. _This is not Malia_ , she repeats like a mantra in her head as she throws the door back into the coyote, hearing the harsh smack as it connects with her engorged skull. The shock of it gifts her a few precious seconds where she's able to close the garage door without a struggle, and the relief of the action alone almost makes Lydia's knees weak.

Her car does not stall upon start up and her garage door opens seamlessly. Lydia might just survive the night, if things can manage to keep going like this.

She pulls out of the garage quickly, backing into the garbage cans she forgot to bring inside earlier this morning. Lydia curses loudly, and it's then that Malia decides to crash through her living room window, glass splintering like diamonds around her.

“Fuck!” Lydia yelps, throwing the car into drive and swerving into the street. Malia is right behind her, bounding on all fours like alpha Peter once did all those months ago. The similarities make her hands shake and she has to white knuckle the steering wheel for any hope of control.

Her phone almost slips from her shaking grip but Lydia manages to redial Scott's number and put him on speakerphone, warming as his voice floods her ear, “Lydia? Any news on Malia?”

Lydia tries to catch her breath, tongue too big in her mouth as she looks at the girl in her rear view mirror, “She tried to _kill_ me, Scott!”

“What!?” Scott's voice is panicked now, and it does nothing to calm her heaving chest, “Are you okay?”

Lydia doesn't know how to answer that question, so she barrels on, voice slightly hysterical, “I got out of my house fine, but she's chasing me in my car right now. Where are you and Derek?”

“We're at the Tate house. We'd hoped she would come by here but her dad hasn't seen her in weeks.”

Lydia hisses out an emphatic breath between clenched teeth. The Tate house is all the way on the other side of town, at the far end of the preserve. It would take fifteen minutes to get there by car, and Lydia has no idea if Malia will get bored of this game of tag by then. She deliberately does not think about Malia actually catching up to and killing her.

“Stiles and Kira?”

“At the school,” Scott's voice sounds guilty. Lydia can't find the patience to tell him this isn't his fault. “Shit, okay, look, lead her to the preserve. We should be able to get there in five minutes.”

The preserver's entrance is only a few minutes away from where she is now. Lydia looks out her mirrors, unsurprised but afraid as she sees that Malia is within arms reach of her bumper.

“Hurry, Scott,” Lydia begs, and she hears him curse again before the line cuts out.

It scares Lydia how painfully and suddenly she wishes Allison was here. Allison, who held electricity to Peter Hale's throat for even daring to look Lydia in the eye. Allison would protect her. She wouldn't be afraid, like Lydia is, she wouldn't be on the verge of tears, like Lydia is. Lydia wishes her best friend hadn't taken all of her courage to the grave with her.

Her car jerks awkwardly, like Lydia's pumping the break, which can't be possible since Lydia has refused to touch it even for stop signs or red lights. She looks behind her, fear stabbing her like a knife as she sees that Malia is continually latching onto her bumper only to lose her grip. Images flash before her eyes, Malia scaling the side of the car, Malia ripping open the sun roof, Malia killing her like some cold opening to a B rated horror movie.

Lydia slams on the gas, pressing the pedal all the way to the floor even as she hears her dad's voice in her ear from those horrible weeks of driver's ed, ordering her to slow down. Malia's blood thirsty growl is loud on the empty street and Lydia watches her bound faster, looking more and more inhuman the quicker she goes.

The preserve is in her sight when the trunk window cracks, glass shattering across her backseat. The wind roars loudly as Lydia flies down streets at illegal speeds, almost loud enough to block out the sound of Malia growling low in her chest. Lydia feels a scream build in her throat and clamps her mouth shut tight.

She refuses to let it out. She will not die here, not by Malia's hand.

 _Just a few more seconds,_ she begs to whatever fate is watching.

“Lydia,” Malia calls, voice guttural and word warped. It sounds like she's choking on the words, forcing them out around a mouthful of food.

Lydia does not allow herself to respond, keeps the scream firmly locked away. Her heart feels like it's going to burst out of her chest, planning a jail break with the yell she's refusing to let out. Malia's clawed hand curves around the drivers seat, sharp nails entirely too close to her throat.

Lydia swerves the car, sending Malia flying into the backseat. She ignores her yelp of pain and turns the car sharply into the preserve, almost losing control during the too fast switch between asphalt and dirt. Sweat builds like rain drops at her temple and Lydia wonders if she is well and truly going to die here tonight.

The car doesn't even come to a complete stop before Lydia throws herself out the door, running faster than she ever has in her life. Fear blinds her, freezes her mind until she's nothing but self preservation, running and running without even looking back. It's insanely stupid. Everything she knows about Malia is in the forest, and she knows this girl is at her prime in the woods that used to be her home, but she can't stop the panic igniting a fire in her veins that forces her to run.

She knows Malia is behind her but she can't look without tripping over a twig or a rock in the dark of the forest. There's only the waning headlights of her still moving car and the full moon to guide her now. Where are Scott and Derek? She hopes desperately that they don't get here too late, that they don't happen across Malia eating her heart. Lydia does not want to be another one of Beacon Hills' casualties.

It happens quickly. Lydia is on the floor before she can even blink, air punched out of her lungs from the force of it. She gasps, flounders like a fish for air, all she can see is Malia's blue eyes, cold and slitted as they stare at her.

She whimpers, cowers against the dirt floor like she hopes to sink into the soft soil and disappear. Malia cocks her head, like she's curious, a spider staring at an insect, and it makes Lydia's stomach squirm. Her hands scrabble at her sides, trying to find anything to save her to no avail. There is only dirt and forest for miles, only her and Malia and no one to save her.

Malia's mouth opens, fangs growing longer and longer and Lydia gives into some blind hope that someone will hear her. She opens her mouth and lets the painful scream fall out. There are no whispers, for once, just the pure panic that's racing through Lydia's body like a marathon runner. It's a scream that chills her to the bone, makes her throat raw like razor blades are being dragged out of her. The world stills as she screams, forest going silent and Malia jerks back from the noise, her over sensitive ears under siege.

The scream doesn't die out slowly, like usual. Lydia snaps her mouth shut, cutting herself off mid scream because she doesn't want to die, not like this, not by the hand of the first person she felt anything toward. She doesn't want Malia to kill her, and tears sting her eyes because _she did this_. She made Malia hate her so much that she sought her out tonight. She's the one who left Malia, alone and broken, in the forest so she could play at popularity.

She wishes she could go back. She wants so desperately to go back.

As the silence drags on, Lydia looks deep into Malia's eyes, wishing for any sign of recognition, any hint of humanity, and only coming up with pure fury. Malia lifts her hand in a high arch and Lydia can see the silhouette of claws against the backdrop of the moon.

“I'm sorry,” she whispers into the quiet, like a sinner begging at the gates of hell for a second chance.

Malia doesn't acknowledge her apology. The clawed hand swipes down, quick and fast. Lydia doesn't close her eyes, can't stop looking at Malia even if it's the last thing she's going to see.

The claws never make it to her throat.

Scott's roar is loud, a deep rumble that forces life into her chilled bones. Both she and Malia jerk quickly toward the noise, and all Lydia can see is a familiar blur with deep, red eyes. He tackles Malia and Lydia feels the air swoop past her, body rolling at the force of Scott's tackle.

The two roll and tumble across the forest floor, growling and scratching and Lydia watches, mouth dropping in horror. Suddenly, Derek's right beside her, hands gentle and face unreadable as he helps her stand.

“Are you alright?” Derek surprises her. He sounds genuinely concerned, staring at her with his wide, hazel eyes. Lydia can easily see how he could be a big brother in another life.

Lydia is trembling. Everything in her feels like she's just been pushed off a cliff only to realize she has a parachute at the last second. She manages a nod, then another, more sure this time, “I- yeah. I'm fine.” She's not fine. She's not anywhere near fine but she _needs_ to be and most of Lydia's life has been 'fake it 'till you make it'. “Go help Scott.”

He doesn't look like he believes her but he doesn't push it. He nods at her in acceptance and then runs into the fray, chasing after Scott and Malia with an inhuman speed. She doesn't stay around to watch, ears ringing as Scott roars and roars again, an alpha demanding submission. Malia is just as loud, yowling like a hellcat as she fights against his command.

She walks back to her car on shaky legs, body numb and mind elsewhere. All she can see is Malia's face, seconds before killing her. It shakes her to her core, knowing that she could have so easily died tonight, but Lydia has almost died hundreds of times. It should be easier to get over.

It isn't. It never is.

She finds her car, thankfully not crashed into a tree or laying in a river. It's stopped, parked in the middle of the forest with the door still open and headlights on. In the driver seat sits none other than Kira, and Lydia smiles weakly as she meets the girl's eyes.

“Oh, god,” Kira scrambles from the front seat, practically falling on her face as she maneuvers out of the car. She reaches for Lydia and gives her a bone crushing hug, even though Lydia remains tense with arms at her sides, “Are you okay? She didn't hurt you, did she?”

Lydia shrugs, “Scott got to us in time.”

It's the most honest answer she can manage to form.

Kira pulls back and nods, relieved that they've managed to survive this. Head lights stream around the corner and Lydia hears the familiar wheeze of Stiles' old jeep before she sees it.

Kira makes a face as Malia lets out an ear piercing growl, “As soon as Scott called us, I started running but by the time I got here, Scott already had Malia. I managed to save your car, though?”

She says it like it's a peace offering, like she's sorry she couldn't get here sooner. Lydia nods her thanks at her, determinedly not thinking about the countless dollars in repair she'll have to do. The bumper has deep indents, metal welded around fingers, and there's no salvaging the back window. Some of the upholstery has tears in it. Lydia can already imagine her father's ire.

As soon as Stiles hops out of his jeep, Malia's fierce growling subsides into something smaller, less aggression and fury. Lydia's feeling too many things right now to know if this, too, upsets her, so she doesn't think on it, and lets Stiles hug her hard against his chest.

“We were so worried,” he says, shaking his head. He looks away from her, staring off into the woods like he wants to run to Malia. There's another growl, this one has a deeper timber so it either belongs to Scott or Derek. Stiles shakes his head and turns to her, fake enthusiasm, “Don't take this personally. Scott tried to kill me his first full moon and he's like my brother. Malia hardly even knows you. She probably just smelled a familiar scent and followed it.”

The words cut deep. She would fall to the forest floor if not for Stiles' arms.

“Wrong place, wrong time,” Kira agrees, brown eyes troubled. There's a high pitched whine and Kira takes a step forward, obviously wondering if she should go help. She wraps an arm around Lydia's shoulder, reminding herself that she's needed here. “It's not your fault.”

 _But it is_ , Lydia wants to say. _It is my fault, it is, it is_ , but the words tie her tongue in knots. She chokes on them, nearly drowns in the fear and the guilt and the pain, and it's only Stiles' and Kira's hands on her shoulders that keep her head above water.

“We'll be ready next full moon,” he swears, unaware of her inner turmoil.

It's another ten minutes before Malia stops fighting.

* * *

“How long?” Kira asks again, voice only a breath of astonishment.

Lydia tucks the bulky house phone between her shoulder and her ear so she can easily cut apart her lettuce. She emphatically slices the leaves as she grunts, “Five weeks. I can't _believe_ she took my cellphone away.”

“Well,” Kira's voice is far away over the old phone, “You _did_ tell her you had a party, and at least she's letting you use the house phone.”

“I throw parties all the time,” Lydia says. She steals a carrot from the sink and bites into it, not mentioning the fact that her mom never explicitly said she _couldn't_ use the landline. “She never cares.”

“Do you break windows, doors, and _cars_ at those parties?”

Lydia sighs loudly, just to let Kira know how annoying she's being. Lydia called to whine, not hear another lecture. When Derek drove her home the other night, Lydia still too shaken to drive, she was shocked to silence at the sight of her house. Malia had practically destroyed the place, and the only believable excuse Lydia could come up with besides _home invasion_ was _out of control house party_.

Her mom instantly bought it, but it also bought Lydia the grounding of her life and a loss of credit card privileges, not to mention her cellphone. It's been two days and Lydia thinks she's going to break out in hives.

She switches the clunky phone to her other shoulder, getting a crick in her neck, and she stares acidly at the lettuce as she hisses, “ _Five. Weeks._ ”

“I say you got off lucky,” Kira muses, “My parents probably would have started home schooling me.”

“Your parents would have understood an out of control supernatural creature trying to kill you,” Lydia reminds. It's not the first time Lydia's considered telling her mom, especially now that she's the only one whose parent is out of the club. She wonders if Mr. Tate knows, and then remembers Scott saying that Malia hadn't been there in weeks. She shakes her head, clearing the thought.

Kira laughs loudly in her ear, “Yeah, right. Have you ever met my parents?” Lydia makes a face at her phone. There's a shuffle on the other end of the line, and then a door closing. “Speaking of, has she talked to you since that night?”

“You're implying that she talked to me at all that night,” Lydia hums. She dumps her lettuce in a bowl with her other vegetables, “But, no, she hasn't. I'm not even sure if I _want_ her to, to be honest.”

Lydia's hands tighten around the bowl, anxiety rising at the thought of seeing Malia at school tomorrow.

“Look, I know you've never _liked_ Malia,” Kira sighs tiredly, hitting Lydia like a slap to the face. What? When did she ever say that? “But you have to know she didn't mean to hurt you that night, right? Stiles says she feels really bad about it.”

“I don't _not_ like Malia,” Lydia says dumbly, appalled. There aren't enough words to correct Kira on that assumption. Is that what everyone thinks? Is this what Scott has been trying to talk to her about? And just when did Kira talk to Stiles about this? “And I don't blame _her_ for what happened that night!”

It's true. Lydia's done nothing for the past two days but blame herself, filled to the brim with guilt. The idea of even facing Malia, of looking her in the eye, causes a cold sweat to break out. She can't stop wondering if Malia really wants her dead, if Malia actually hates her. She hasn't slept more than an hour the past few nights, kept awake by the blue eyes that haunt her.

“Lydia, come on, you can hardly be in the same room as her sometimes. And you're always giving her these _looks_.”

Looks? What looks? Lydia feels attacked suddenly and wonders how the conversation even got here. Weren't they just complaining about how unreasonable parents are?

“I don't hate Malia, she's the one who hates me!” It comes out suddenly, the words escaping before Lydia can even think about them. She clenches her eyes shut as soon as the words register in her mind, the petulant tone they were wrapped in, and she wants so badly to reach out into the void and stuff them back down her throat.

“Malia has never said a bad word about you,” Kira snorts, then pauses, “Well, I mean. You know Malia. She doesn't mean anything vindictively.”

Lydia shakes her head, then again, unable to wrap her mind around this.

“I have to go,” Lydia lies. She can practically feel Kira's apologies. She hangs up before the girl can voice them, throws the phone against the counter and watches it slide across the tiled surface. She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes, trying to calm down but all of her emotions are everywhere and her head hurts.

Lydia slouches against the counter and hangs her head down, breathing out harshly through clenched teeth. Does she hate Malia? She's honestly never thought about it before. How could she, though? How could she hate Malia when she represents the only happiness in Lydia's childhood? How can she hate the girl who was once her best friend?

If anything, Lydia hates herself more than she could ever hate Malia, even after everything. Malia could have killed her that night and Lydia would have still been apologizing with her blood on Malia's teeth. Lydia's still the one who left a traumatized girl alone in the woods, is still the person who abandoned her most trusted friend at the first bit of attention sent in her direction. And even when Malia turned back into a human Lydia let her flounder through life on her own. She could have went to visit her in Eichen, could have sought her out to help her adjust, but instead she hid and pretended nothing was wrong, just like she always does.

Three years. Lydia counts them in her mind, recalling almost every second. Three years she spent in that clearing, every day after school and all day on weekends. How did she manage to cut such a big part of her life away? Even at her peak of popularity, Lydia can't picture her ice queen self turning her back on her coyote, so how did it ever happen?

She's tired. She's so tired of this feeling of regret that weighs down on her every minute of every day. She can't keep looking at Malia only to drown in her own guilt. She can't be apart of a pack when 1/5th of it makes her feel like she's walking on hot coals.

Does Malia feel the same way? Lydia can't help but wonder. Apparently, Stiles says she feels bad about it, but is that it? Could Malia possibly regret their past just as much as she does?

They can't keep going on like this. Lydia's going to fall apart from the stress of it all if she has to keep up this mask any longer. She's dialing the number before she's even aware of it, and every second the phone rings feels like an hour.

“Yellow?” Stiles' familiar voice answers the phone.

“Is Malia there?” Lydia asks. The words are wobbly and stiff, but they get the job done.

“Shit, Lydia,” Stiles flails. Lydia can hear something being dropped in the background, “Uh yeah. Yeah, she's here. Is everything okay?”

“I just wanted-” Lydia pauses. What _does_ she want? Why did she even call? “Can I talk to her?”

“Yeah,” Stiles agrees, sounding far too surprised. She wonders how long everyone's been so sure about her hating this girl. “Yeah, 'course. Uh, look, go easy on her, okay? She's not going to act it, but she feels really bad about everything.”

 _Go easy on her_. Lydia shakes her head. How had she let it get this bad? How had her best friends confused her guilt with hate?

There's noises in the background, and Stiles must have placed his hand over the phone because Lydia can't understand anything beyond muffled voices. She stares at the sad remnants of her forgotten salad, tapping her nails along the counter top.

It feels like ages before Malia says hesitantly, “Hi?”

“Hey,” Lydia greets awkwardly, face screwing up at the word. She sounds too eager, like when boys at parties get cocky on wine coolers and decide to talk to her. “I just wanted to talk.”

“So, talk,” Malia sounds hesitant and unsure, even as Lydia hears Stiles coaching her in the background. There's a _thwap_ , like something being thrown, and then Malia says, “I want to apologize. For the other night?”

The words are stilted and wrong in her mouth and Lydia smiles sadly to herself. Coyotes don't apologize.

“It's fine,” she says, “I don't blame you, Malia.” It's the first sentence that Lydia's been able to send this girl's way that doesn't feel wrong.

There's a long pause, like Malia's trying to wrap her head around that.

“Look, can we meet somewhere?” Malia asks briskly, “This phone is hurting my ears.”

Lydia hears Stiles complain loudly in the background and smiles to herself, stomach warming for some stupid reason. She doesn't question it, looking quickly at the clock on the stove and realizing that her mom won't be home for another three hours.

“I can meet you outside of Stiles' house?” Lydia suggests, not knowing if Malia would be comfortable coming back to Lydia's house, after everything. Lydia still isn't completely comfortable in her own room, keeps imagining those blue eyes outside her window. Her mom hasn't gotten around to asking why she's been using the guest room lately.

“That works,” Malia says, and then the line goes dead.

Lydia tries her best to squash the feeling of fondness surging through her like a bug. She ends the call and sets the phone down on the counter, thinking. She's going to talk to Malia Tate, the girl who was once the coyote that she loved so dearly. Lydia is determined. They're going to really talk this time, no pleasantries, no skirting around their shared past. They'll confront the elephant in the room head on. Lydia will settle for nothing less.

Her car is still in the shop, thanks to her dad's wallet and a very long lecture. Her mom actually forced Lydia to call him herself and ask him to get it fixed, almost as if part of her punishment. She remembers the tone of his voice when she told him about the party. _“You wouldn't behave like this if you lived with me!”_ he had said. At that point, Lydia handed the phone back to her mom and tried to ignore the anger churning like acid in her chest.

She leaves the mess of a salad on the counter to clean later and heads out to the garage, shaking her head at the sight of her old bicycle. She hasn't used it since the summer of 8th grade and it seems oddly fitting to use it now.

Stiles only lives a few blocks away, but by the time she sees his familiar house Lydia feels out of breath, lungs too full of excitement to take in much air. She hasn't felt this giddy since she was a kid, since she became too cool for real emotions and then too busy avoiding death and fighting off insanity to dabble in positivity. It's a weird feeling, but Lydia decides she likes the unfamiliar way it pops and bubbles in her chest.

The metal of the bike scrapes against the sidewalk far more aggressively than Lydia had intended, but she doesn't pay it much mind. Her hands flitter around her head, making sure her hair is in place and there's nothing on her face. Feeling stupid and silly and so immature it causes flames to lick at her cheeks, Lydia wishes she had brought her compact mirror with her, suddenly self conscious for the first time in years.

Stiles' screen door screeches, neglected hinges alerting Lydia and everyone in a mile radius that it's opening. Her head jerks up like a spasm and there's Malia, standing in the doorway with an anxious looking Stiles fretting behind her.

Malia turns and says something to him, too far away for Lydia to make out, but She sees Stiles roll his eyes and retreat back into the house. She's sure he's going to find a curtain to hide behind in a few seconds.

Lydia's grateful that the sight of Malia doesn't trigger any unpleasant memories, thankful that the blue eyes and protruding teeth are saved for her nightmares. Her heart beats steady as Malia closes the front door behind her and heads down the walkway, legs long and gleaming underneath the sun.

Her mouth goes dry the closer Malia gets, cotton balls stuffed in her throat. Why did she do this? A voice in her mind screams. Why couldn't she just leave well enough alone?

“Hi,” she greats lamely when Malia is next to her on the sidewalk. Her arms cross over her torso and she watches as Malia's eyes jump to it, sniffing out her vulnerability.

“Hi,” Malia parrots back automatically, a pleasantry drilled into her by Scott and Stiles. She kicks at the sidewalk, “I wanted to apologize. Again. For the other night. I don't really know why I attacked you but I know I could have seriously hurt you and I'm really sorry.”

Lydia shakes her head, “It wasn't you. I understand that. Jackson, my ex, was an egotistical ass on a good day but he wouldn't have killed people, you know?” Malia looks away from her, features tight. Lydia fights the urge to kick herself, biting the inside of her cheek so hard she's surprised it doesn't draw blood. “This supernatural stuff makes people do scary things, sometimes, but that doesn't make you bad.”

There's a noise, a hollow sound that should be laughter but isn't at all. Malia shakes her head.

“It doesn't _make_ us do scary things, Lydia,” Malia's voice is empty where humor should be, “We _are_ scary things. I would have killed you if Scott and Derek had gotten there a second later. You can't know that and say I'm not a monster.”

The truth of it chills her like a winter frost, but it's the bite in the words, like a rabid dog pulling at its leash, that hurts the most. Still, Lydia steps forward, “You're not a monster. You could never be a monster.”

Memories trickle behind her eyes; a coyote tilting its head curiously at her, that same coyote attacking a mountain lion for her. Malia could never be a monster, not when she let a small girl into her den and never sent her away. She is not the big bad wolf of this story. She did not gobble up little red riding hood.

“You can be scary, the same way any human can be scary,” Lydia reasons, “Stick around for a while. You might see me whip up another Molotov cocktail.” Malia gives her a small grin at that and Lydia warms at it, “But you're not only scary, Malia. I'm not afraid of you.”

This is good, Lydia allows herself to think. She feels like she's never been this open with Malia, not since she was a little girl spilling her heart out on those warm days at the den. Every other interaction with her feels like it's been made with puppets, them reading scripts and looking out into the audience instead of at each other. This is the only thing that feels real to her and her hands shake at the thought of letting it go, of getting back on that stage and forcing those words out of her mouth.

Malia nods, then again, like this action is a new thing to her. She turns to head back to the house and Lydia reacts blindly, gripping the wild girls elbow before she can even think it through. Malia stops, looks between Lydia and her wrist like she's considering biting through it like an animal caught in a trap.

Lydia drops it like she's been burned, tucks a piece of hair behind her ear and says lowly, “I can't keep doing this, Malia.”

The words are like knives against her throat, grating against their sharp edges and coming out half deformed and raw but Malia hears them fine. Her eyebrows raise slightly and she turns, facing Lydia with a confused expression.

“Keep doing what?” She asks, face scrunched up.

“This,” Lydia says, voice wrapped in desperation and embarrassment. She waves a hand at the space between them, “Avoiding each other. Pretending. I can't- I can't keep acting like I don't know you.”

Malia's face dawns with understanding, but still she says, “I'm not avoiding you, Lydia.”

“Yes you are.”

“No, I'm not,” she shakes her head slowly and recites, voice stiff like she's reading from a textbook, “Avoidance is when you go out of your way to not deal with something or someone.” She shrugs awkwardly, “I'm not avoiding you. I just haven't wanted to be around you.”

Lydia's heart stops, and the word escapes her in an airy breath, “What?”

Cities would fall under the shaking of her knees, the tremor in her spine, but Lydia forces herself to remain standing, to not crumble like a building when hit by such a big earth quake.

“I just don't want to be around you, Lydia,” Malia takes half of a step backward, eyes darting to the side like she's looking for an escape, “I know you're important to Stiles and the pack so I'm nice about it, but I just. I don't want you near me.” Lydia's mouth falls open and she doesn't even know what words were plotting to escape but Malia is quick to cut them off, “It's not because I tried to kill you and it's not because I'm mad at you for abandoning me.”

Abandon. She abandoned her. Lydia's heart wrenches in her chest, her aorta twists and collapses, blood cutting off from her brain.

“Why?” The word is like a dying animals last breath. She wonders vacantly if there's tears on her cheeks, can't feel anything besides the dull thrum of pain spreading from her core like a string pulled taught.

“I just don't like you. I don't trust you. _I don't know you_.” Malia says simply, easy as breathing, as if she can't see that this is ruining the girl in front of her. “You don't have to keep pretending, because you don't know me, Lydia, same as I don't know you.”

“But. We.” The coyote in her memories doesn't coincide with this girl in front of her, and it's that thought that stabs at Lydia like a spear because _Malia is right_. Lydia is smart. She's intuitive. She should have been able to guess what Malia would have said if she came here tonight. Lydia could chart out every conversation with Allison down to the girls dimples. If Malia was truly her friend, truly her coyote, Lydia would have been able to know that this wild girl would have snapped at her hand just as clearly as she had on that rainy night only two years ago.

If Lydia had even taken a second to get to know this girl beyond her genetic classification, she would have known that any conversation like this would have been chewed up and spat at her feet.

Malia just stares blankly at her. There's nothing mean in her eyes, just cold, honest truth. It breaks her heart more than any hate could.

Malia is not her coyote from so long ago, and Lydia is startled to realize that she knows _nothing_. Malia is not a person to her, but a memory of happier times and the thought makes bile flood her throat.

Malia leaves her on the sidewalk without even a look back. When she gets to the start of the driveway she turns, and says softly, so soft that Lydia has to strain to hear it, “You left, Lydia. You couldn't have expected me to just keep waiting for you to come back.”

Lydia watches her walk all the way into the house, and only when the heavy front door closes does she feel herself cry.

 


	3. But if I know you, I know what you'll do

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no excuse. Life is hard and words are harder. 
> 
> This was originally meant to be one giant chunk of a chapter to make up for the year long pause, but this ultimately felt like a good place to end and post this one. This is all about healing, and the next one, the final one, will be about coming together again. 
> 
> Feel free to murder me. The last chapter should be posted within a month. I've gotten halfway through it!

Stiles sends her desperate, fidgety looks all day at school on Monday, but he never leaves Malia's side, as if the hallway between them is a battle line that he can't bring himself to cross.

If Lydia acknowledged any of the packs existence that day, then she would be hurt by whose side he has chosen, but there's no possible way for Lydia to know since her eyes are reserved only for the letters in her books as she strings them into words, trying valiantly to stuff her mind full of so much information and facts that all of Malia's sentences and scorn will fall out of her.

She doesn't so much as glance at Malia and the pack on Tuesday or Wednesday and has her cold shoulder well frosted and chilled to perfection by Thursday. People step out of her way in the halls, whisper behind cupped hands as she walks past and trail along after her in between classes. People are sheep and they will follow a wolf no matter how sharp their teeth are.

Girls she used to text nonstop in Sophomore year are suddenly on speaking terms with her again, throwing their hair over their shoulders and admiring her coat and acting as if the past year hasn't happened, as if Lydia has not been labeled the town basket case ten times over, like stepping too close to her in the hallway wasn't social suicide a month ago.

She ignores Scott's calls and Kira's calls and Stiles' calls and she does her homework and she goes to school and she smiles at people like a robot, following a string of code just to make it through the day.

She speaks without thought, startled to realize that she has made twelve people cry in the course of a week just by frowning at their outfit ensemble and a girl named Christi whose name used to be BFF in her phone grins cheekily at her, says, “The queen is back, bitches,” like Lydia took a sabbatical, like she's back to normal now, like the past year she has been wearing someone else's skin.

She finds herself staring into the mirror longer than normal every morning as she applies makeup, as if trying to find who she is in the green of her eyes and in her mouth that only knows how to frown unless others are around. She is no one unless there are people watching her to pretend for.

She is simply a puppet sagging in its strings on an empty stage, the theater lights off and the seats empty. This is who she has always been and this is who she will always be and the thought should scare her but it doesn't because she can't bring herself to feel.

She has been living with a thawed heart for too long. Now, the shards of glass in her chest cut like daggers into her lungs, and Lydia often can't breathe, as if there's blood filling them instead of air.

“I know you and Allison were close,” Lydia's mother says one night, watching sadly as Lydia pokes at a chicken breast. “But Lydia, sweetheart, would she really want you to be this upset? Shouldn't you be celebrating her life?”

Lydia flinches at the question, remembering Allison's smile that slowly dimmed the longer she knew her, remembers the kindness and strength inside of the girl who was her best friend. She remembers the anger, the unbridled fury the girl had in the wake of her own mother's demise, remembers the nights Allison couldn't sleep because of the blood on her hands.

“I have to go do my homework,” Lydia says, voice airy and monotone and all it does is make her mother's frown deepen.

She heads up to the guest room, fully prepared to fall into a bed that isn’t hers and sleep for the next twelve hours, only to find a shape leaning against her windowsill.

There's nothing intimidating in the curve of his shoulders, and his hands are relaxed by his side, brown eyes open and warm. The look in them, the understanding, cuts her to the bone, and Lydia wants to grab at him, beg him to look at her and see her for who she really is: a selfish coward, an abandoner, someone who has no place in a pack.

She doesn't deserve Scott's understanding or his support, but her mouth selfishly won't tell him that. Instead, she looks away from him and to the bed, thinking about just how exhausted she is, down to the marrow of her bones.

“I haven't seen you in a while,” Scott says, and his voice is calm and patient, a gentle timber that she could fall asleep to.

“I've been busy,” she says, and even she cringes at the overly perkiness in her voice. “Catching up with old friends, working on my honors coursework. I haven't had much free time lately.”

“I know,” he says, and the gentleness in it makes her feel raw and guilty; she's lying to him and he's too polite to call her out on it. He takes a deep breath, looking like the nervous sophomore she hasn't seen in what feels like decades, and says, “We miss you. All of us. I know it's been hard lately, but it's better with all of us together.”

Scott grips at his chest, right below where his heart is, “It hurts less when we're all together.”

“I know,” Lydia nods at him, her voice cracking over the words. She feels as much dread as captain of the Titanic must have felt at the sound, like she's been beat over the head with an iceberg and now she, too, is drowning. “But I just- I can't be around everyone right now. I just-”

Scott's face changes, if only for a split second, and Lydia feels acid churning in her stomach, certain that Malia has told him everything, waits for him to tell her just how horrible and undeserving she is as a friend. She waits for him to validate every thought that curls in her head at night, but he just asks, “Is it because of Malia?”

He must hear Lydia's heart stop and crash through the floor, because he rectifies quickly, “Because of what happened in the woods?”

“It's just everything,” Lydia tells him, desperate to get away from this, from his understanding eyes that make her feel like she could commit murder and he would still forgive her. “School, the pack, and Allison.” She watches as Scott takes a step back at the name. “It's just too much.”

“You don't have to handle this alone, Lydia,” he tells her, reclaiming a step forward. “Allison,” he pauses after the name, swallows thickly, “She wouldn't want us to be torn apart like this. We want to be here for you.”

“Not everyone,” Lydia finds herself saying, the words pulled from her like a snake following a flute. “Malia hates me.”

Scott's hand is on her shoulder, firm and supportive and she wants to sink into it, wants comfort she's been keeping herself at arm's distance from for so long.

“Don't take that personally,” Scott says, “She's just afraid of what she did. It's hard fighting your instincts when the moon has them that close. She'll learn, and she'll come around. You don't have to avoid us at school because of that. It actually might be good for her to be around you in a controlled setting.”

Lydia clenches her eyes, hating the way everyone makes her feel like a bomb Malia might trigger.

“I thought you two were doing better,” he lets go of her shoulder, rubs at his neck awkwardly. “Stiles says you two had a good talk last week, that everything was fine.”

Lydia hasn't talked to Stiles, actually talked to him, in what feels like forever. She rolls her eyes and bites out, “Yeah. It was a great talk. Very enlightening. Look, we have school tomorrow. Maybe you should just- go.”

Lydia steps away from him, trying to storm out of the room but Scott stops her. He grips her wrist, loose enough that she could pull away from him if she really wanted to. But, she doesn't. She relaxes into the solidarity of his hold, allows herself to feel the comfort that only Scott can bring.

“What's wrong?” He asks her, voice soft and vulnerable and Lydia thinks of the incredulity of the situation, thinks of how when she was a Freshman she would have never let Scott McCall breathe the same air as her let alone comfort her. “Really, what's going on? No bullshit.”

The curse chokes a laugh out of her, but even she can hear her heart stutter when she stubbornly insists, “I'm fine.”

“No, you're not. None of us are, but you especially.” His hand tightens around her wrist, but not like a vice, not like those controlling touches boys have always given her. This is something solid, something anchoring her, something to let her know that he's here.

“God, Scott,” Lydia tries to snap but it comes without any heat. “Don't you have your own broken heart to nurse instead of trying to take care of mine?”

“Sorta comes with the area of being a True Alpha,” he says, and Lydia can hear the forced smile in his voice. “I'm here for you. You know I am. Do you want to talk to me?”

And she does. God, she does. She wants to tell him every bad side of her, every horrible thing she's done. She wants to tell him that she abandoned her only friend in the woods for popularity and boys, that even when she realized that that animal was actually a human she did nothing but hide, that she could have helped Malia and all she did was stand by and watch this girl stumble through being a human. That she could have been there for her, supported her, but she couldn't even look her in the eye.

She wants to tell him that she's afraid selfishness is so deeply ingrained in her that she is undeserving of love or affection or friends, and is that why they all keep dying? Why the only people she has ever loved move an entire ocean away or are buried? Is she so unworthy, undeserving, that whatever cruel fate controls their world takes every ounce of gentleness she finds?

The words catch in her throat and she can't breathe around them, choking on her remorse and her grief. She turns without thinking, falling into his chest and Scott's arms immediately wrap around her shaking shoulders.

“I knew Malia,” she says, like she's biting a bullet. The words come out through clenched teeth, her heaving chest forcing the words out through a meat grinder, but somehow Scott is able to understand what she means.

“Like, in elementary school?” He asks her.

She laughs at the incredulity of the situation and shakes her head against his chest, soaking the thin material of his shirt with her wet eyes.

“No,” she clears her throat, “When she was a coyote.” Scott tenses up around her, but Lydia presses on. The lock has been broken and now every skeleton in her closet is pouring out. “I was nine- no, ten. I was ten and I found her in the woods, and I thought I was some special book heroine because she didn't eat my face off.”

Lydia chokes out a laugh, wipes the snot from her nose. Her mascara is smeared sideways. She probably looks like she's been in a fight but she doesn't care. For once in her life she just doesn't care.

“She was my best friend for years. I visited her everyday after school and stayed with her until the street lights came on, but then I got popular, and I didn't handle it well.” Lydia clenches her eyes shut and wraps her arms tighter around Scott, wanting to hide from the truth of it all. She presses herself against him and tries to enjoy the warmth of it; she knows, as sure as she could ever know anything, that he will push her away from him as soon as she says this. “I abandoned her alone in the woods just because I suddenly had friends.”

“Why didn't you tell us?” Scott asks, and there's nothing given away in his voice. She can't tell if he hates her or not and it makes her want to scream.

She pulls away from him and he lets her. She can’t face the idea of him pushing her away once he finally understands.

“At first I wasn't sure,” she turns away, wraps her arms around her middle. She feels stupid and foolish for saying anything, even worse for acting like this. She's humiliated to be reduced to this crying girl over someone who doesn't want to give her the time of day. “I mean, there's tons of coyotes in California, and I just. I didn't want to believe it, you know? But then you turned her back into Malia, and she stared at me like she hated the ground I stood on, Scott. I wasn't brave enough to- I was too selfish- I-”

Lydia takes a deep breath to calm her stuttering heart.

“And then there was the Nemeton and the Nogitsune to worry about, and then _Allison_ happened, and it was never the right time and the longer I kept it to myself the more ridiculous it became.” She wipes at her eyes and laughs, again, “The more ridiculous I became.”

She turns to face him, and the look of concern that meets her is enough to make her feel as if the ground has swallowed her whole. She rocks side to side, trying to comfort herself but it doesn't work. Her nerves feel like they're dancing under her skin. The room feels too small.

“She hates me, Scott,” Lydia says, plain as day. “She absolutely loathes me, and I don't blame her! I could have helped her, you know? I could have eased her back into being human, I could have helped her with school work, I could have reached out- something to make up for just leaving her traumatized and alone for all of those years, but I did nothing. I hid and I ran and now the only person who made me feel like I wasn't- wasn't a freak or alone or- she hates me, Scott. And I deserve it.”

She says it again, “I deserve it, I deserve it, I deserve it,” sobbing as she chokes on the words. Scott rushes forward and grabs her again, refusing to let her go this time. He rubs her arms and whispers that it's okay to her, but it's not. It's not okay. She doesn't understand why he's still here, why he hasn't thrown her from the pack or scorned her, why is he acting like this is okay?

He pulls back suddenly and Lydia thinks this is it, this is the moment, and tries to turn her heart to ice but Scott's warm eyes won't let her.

“Lydia,” he says, voice hard, “Listen to me. Lydia, you were a child.”

The words shock her to her core and she looks at him, wide eyes and stilled heart, trying to make sense of what he's saying.

“You were a kid. You couldn't have known, and even if you did what could you have done to help?”

“I- I could have-” she tries, but her mind is blank. What could she have done? She didn't know about werewolves and werecoyotes and monsters when she was young. She thought the beast in front of her was an animal, and a wild one at that.

“But I could have helped her adjust! I could have visited her in Eichen!”

“We all could have,” Scott tells her quickly. “We all left her there, Lydia. Not just you, but me and Stiles, too. I turned her back into a human and forgot about her, and if Stiles hadn't gone there too then who knows? We probably would have just kept forgetting about her.”

“She forgives you, though,” she says, hating the sourness in her voice. “I was her only connection to humanity and I just abandoned her.”

Scott is quiet for a beat, and Lydia feels a bittersweet sigh of relief swell in her. In a weird way, it feels good to have this secret in the air between them. She pulls back and looks in his eyes, searching for any validation for the storm swirling in her heart, but only finds a deep, aching sadness that sings to the grief inside of her.

“Sometimes,” Scott says, refusing to let her look away. “We lash out at the people closest to us because we trust them. We know that, no matter what, when we’re done being hurt, they’ll be there to help us pick up the pieces again.”

She shakes her head, “This isn’t like I forgot a birthday or lied to her about being a werewolf, Scott. I left her when she needed me most. I didn’t treat her with any respect, and even now that she’s back as a human? I still can’t see Malia. I’m so selfish, Scott, and cruel, and I never thought about her or what she was feeling. All I _ever_ think about is _me_.”

He lets go of her, and the absence of his warmth burns her like dry ice. It’s like there’s a hole in her center, an aching, gaping wound of hurt, and Lydia is quick to cover it with her arms, scrambling for any way to possibly protect herself from her own bitter truth.

Lydia is not used to being vulnerable, and she has just ripped open her chest, rearranged her arteries, and tied a knot around her aorta.

“Are you mad at me?” She finds herself asking, the words coming unbidden to her lips, as if she’s a toddler who has just broken a rule.

“You were a child,” Scott says again, firmer this time, but Lydia still flinches from the excuse.

“Of course I’m not mad at you. You’re pack, Lydia, and more importantly? You’re one of my _best friends_. This is a complicated situation, but it’s not the end of the world. You aren’t malicious or sadistic, it’s not like you were doing this to hurt Malia, right?” Lydia frantically shakes her head no, because she could never imagine purposefully hurting the girl. Scott nods, “You’re young, and you’re confused, and that’s okay. I only wish you had told me sooner. I didn’t know you had been in pain for so long.”

Lydia scrambles back until her knees hit the bed. She sits on it, cushioned by the plush, new mattress, and stares at her thighs because it hurts to look at someone who loves her so unconditionally. It hurts to believe anyone can know these horrible parts of her and not feel anything other than hate.

So many people have left Lydia, either of their own volition or violently taken from her heart, that it feels too dangerous to have someone stay.

She doesn’t look up as the floor creaks, nor when the bed shifts, and Scott’s warmth is beside her. It’s comforting, and she hates it. She wishes so desperately to be fourteen years old again, for Scott McCall to be dirt on the bottom of her heel, to not know someone who can read her so easily.

“What do you want from her?” He asks. “Acknowledgement? Friendship?”

The question sounds so simple; the answer is anything but.

“I don’t know,” she admits, voice quiet and timid and nothing like who she wants the world to think she is. Lydia fiddles with a loose thread on her sleeping shorts, “I just want her in my life, in any way she’ll have me. She’s been so important to me, Scott, such a huge part of my life. Everything feels so- wrong. Everything’s felt wrong since the day I left that damn forest and never went back.”

She sees him nod in her peripheral, and his hand is warm and assuring when he squeezes her shoulder.

“We can fix this, but only together. You can’t keep avoiding us, not if you want us in your life.”

She hears the unspoken words: _you can’t keep avoiding her if you want her in your life._ Lydia nods quickly and swallows thickly, trying to ignore feeling like a child being scorned.

He sighs, and the bed squeaks as he moves to stand.

“Wait.” Lydia stops him. She reaches out for his wrist, and feels stupid and silly but she asks anyway, “Will you stay? I don’t know if I can be alone right now.”

Someone has cruelly scooped all of her organs out and abandoned them on the table next to her. How can she possibly put them back together alone?

Scott doesn’t even hesitate before nodding. He slips his shoes off and settles back on the bed, Lydia following quickly after. She has cuddled with many people before, usually in a bubble of post-coitus warmth, but it’s never been like this.

There is no one alive that she trusts more than Scott. She has never loved anyone the way she loves him. As an only child, she has never had siblings, but knows deep in her heart that Scott loves her more than any brother ever could.

Once she’s settled into his side, he leans over and turns off the bedside light.

Lydia smiles into the darkness, and says, without thinking, “I can see why Allison fell in love with you.”

And Scott lets out a surprised, sad laugh. She’d feel bad for letting the thought out if she couldn’t make out the curve of his smile in the moonlight.

“She thought the world of you, you know.” Scott says. “You were the first person to make her feel like she belonged here.”

“Yeah,” she accepts with a shrug. “But _you_ were the first place she ever felt like _home_.”

She listens to the soft pulse of his heart under her ear, and in the silence of her guest bedroom, he whispers to the ceiling, “I miss her.”

The words are sharp, like he’s being gutted as he admits it. They hurt her to hear, but not anywhere near as much as it hurts him to say. Lydia wonders if this is the first time he’s allowed himself to acknowledge it.

She wonders why she hid in her room for weeks instead of being with Scott, wonders who was there for him while he was being there for everyone else.

“I think we always will,” Lydia whispers to his shirt, and maybe it’s not the right thing to say, or even the most comforting thing, but it’s the honest thing. It’s a fact of life now, that every second they will feel the loss of her like a knife to the gut.

Scott’s arm wraps tighter around her.

She’s glad he didn’t let her drift away. Idly, as she falls asleep, she knows Allison would be happy, too.  

* * *

She sits with the pack at lunch again.

Stiles eyes her with wide, confused eyes, but is ultimately pleased. Kira simply grins at her the entire time and lets her slide back into their normal routine without any fuss. Scott smiles at her, happy and bright, and doesn’t say anything.

Malia ignores her.

Lydia learns to accept and let go of the pain rather than internalize it. She calls it progress.

She learns more about Malia- not Malia the coyote, and not Malia the wild girl, but Malia, the person.

She learns Malia doesn’t like sugary, processed foods.

She learns Malia only likes wearing solid colors.

She learns Malia falls in love with every dog she sees.

Lydia watches her, close enough to smell her but far enough that they can pass as acquaintances to an outsider; far enough that Malia doesn’t tense, anxious at her proximity. It has only taken a few days to discover the unspoken and otherwise unnoticed three feet length rule and she has abided by it rigidly. Lydia tilts her head to the side, puts her fingers on her chin, and stares at Malia like a math problem that sends her brain itching.

How can you stare at someone for so long, and feel like you’ll never know enough about them?

Malia doesn’t even breathe in her direction.

* * *

The Lake House has always been the golden arch of her family. It is their small palace of peace. It’s the thing her parents fought most bitterly over during the divorce.

Her mom won it, though, because she had full custody of Lydia, and her grandma had intended to give the house to Lydia on her eighteenth birthday anyway, apparently. It’s still a point of contrition anytime her parents are in the same room.

Lydia doesn’t care much for her family, though. Her house hasn’t been a home since she was old enough to recognize her parents bitter arguing for what it was. She loves her mom, but her real family is a group of broken, beaten teenagers, searching for the one spot of love and acceptance in the world.

It’s why, when the pack starts muttering about the next full moon, she offers up the Lake House without a second thought.

“It’s quiet,” she says, casually flipping through her binder. Stiles wants to borrow notes from Economics, because he spent the entire class glaring daggers at some kid he’s certain is filming them. “It’s secluded. The place is 200 acres and there’s no one around for miles. It’s perfect.”

She kind of wishes Derek hadn’t disappeared, chasing Cora to South America. He’s always been really good at finding desolate places that no other sane person would actively visit.

Everyone else agrees quickly, since it sounds better than the other plans of ruining Scott’s bedroom, hanging out in the decrepit Hale house basement, using Derek’s abandoned subway car, and being in the place of Boyd’s death.

Everyone that is, except for Scott, who stares at her with wide, concerned eyes over the lunch table and asks softly, “Are you sure?”

They haven’t talked about it since their heart to heart three weeks ago, but Lydia simply smiles back at him, “Why wouldn’t I be? Just as long as everyone keeps their claws out of my grandmother’s antique hardwood floor, it should be fine.”

“I’ll bring Cards Against Humanity!” Kira says.

Lydia, Stiles, and Kira all exchange quick high fives.

They take the day off of school and spend it at the Lake House, taking extra precautions since last time Malia went mad with bloodlust before the moon even showed in the sky. They take the time to set up comfortable chain areas and move anything that could potentially hurt a rampaging supernatural creature.

Or be hurt by them.

Scott gets set up at the dock and Malia claims the basement.

“I don’t have an anchor anymore,” Scott explains at her questioning glance, watching with narrowed eyes as he tests the strength of cuffs on his wrist. “Last full moon, I had Derek to keep me in check and was focused on sav- finding Malia. I just don’t want to risk anything.”

They play card games until Malia starts to get twitchy and agitated, lashing out at anyone who doesn’t pick her card, practically ripping one between her clenched fingers. Her eyes flash blue, a blinding, cold color that makes Lydia remember that night in her foyer, and the feeling of certain death that settled in her gut. Stiles is quick to throw his cards down, grip Malia’s arms, and steer her away from the group.

Lydia’s impressed by how soft he makes his voice, by how sure his hands are, and wonders how Stiles never shows his fear. He buries it under actions and sarcasm, but she’s certain it burns through him like lightening. How does he manage to make his best friend and girlfriend not feel like monsters? How does he keep them from knowing he’s afraid? Because how could you not be afraid, holding a ticking time bomb of fangs and claws so close to your chest?

Stiles doesn’t come back up but Scott doesn’t seem concerned about it, so Lydia rips her eyes from the cellar door and tries to focus on the game. They make it three more boring rounds before Scott takes a deep breath, staring in disappointment at the claws slowly growing from his fingers.

“Fuck,” he says quietly. “I hate the chains.”

Kira smiles gently at him, “It’s just for a night. Come on, we can keep you company.”

Lydia gathers all of the cards and the three of them head to the dock, Kira supporting half of Scott’s weight. She walks behind them, head tilted to the side as she admires them together.

“She’s good for him,” Allison said to her once, body coated in neon paint, voice buried under the blaring music of a rave. “I want him to be happy.”

 _He is,_ she wants so desperately to be able to say, _but he’d be happier if you were here, too._

Scott doesn’t fight them as they wrap him in chains. He closes his eyes as the wrists cuffs click tightly against his skin, and Lydia is torn between making them loose for him and respecting his desire to be contained.

It’s another hour of soft conversation, of absentmindedly reading cards, no longer enjoying a now three person game, before the moon rises to its full height. Lydia tracks its progress through the mouth of the boat house, the stream of light gently rolling along the water.

She doesn’t know if it’s because he’s outside or not, but the effect is almost instantaneous.

Once second, he is Scott McCall, and the next he is something entirely different, with red eyes, sharp teeth, and sharper claws. He strains against his chains, pulling so taught that they _creak_ , the sound like a shotgun in the silence of the night.

“Scott, it’s okay,” Lydia tries to say, only to be cut off by a rumble that shakes her to the core.

She’s never seen Scott like this. To her, Scott has always had impeccable control. She’s heard the stories, of course, of the early days, when Scott almost shifted in class, how he almost killed Allison a handful of times. It’s one thing to hear it and another to see it, though.

It feels wrong.

“Get Stiles,” Kira demands, and the once quiet girl is turned into a general in the wake of her boyfriend’s loss of control. Lydia watches, almost entranced, as Kira doesn’t flinch away from Scott as he turns his attention toward her, roaring in her face. It’s almost humorous how calmly Kira says, “He knows how to handle him,” with an alpha werewolf snapping for her throat.

Shame claws at her chest. Does Kira think she can’t handle this?

Lydia may be just a banshee, but she has more experience than Kira in regards to out of control supernaturals. She wants to be here for Scott like he’d be there for her, like he always has been, but he opens his mouth and roars again, chains pulling tight against the metal beam, and Lydia has never been good at ignoring logic.

Kira’s right. Stiles has more experience with Scott than all of them combined, both in and out of control.

Malia rumbles out a low, angry growl when Lydia opens the basement door. She feels like she’s intruding, like she’s at the mouth of a den she shouldn’t wander into. It lasts for all of two seconds before she remembers Scott’s deep, red eyes, and forces herself down the rickety steps.

The girl in question is securely shackled up, tied to the metal support beam in the middle of the room. When they were establishing containment zones, Lydia assured everyone this one wasn’t load bearing, so no matter how much the coyote huffed and puffed, the Lake House would not come tumbling down.

Malia looks like a mess. Her hair is wet with sweat, strands thin and in a disarray all about her face. She’s completely shifted like she was a month ago, face inhuman and jaw jutted out, pointed fangs poking from her bottom lip. The only way she can possibly look more like an animal is if she spouts fur. Her chest heaves, shirt ripped from her struggling, and the look she gives Lydia makes her want to run back upstairs and hide.

It’s her eyes though, which cause Lydia’s breath to catch in her throat. They’re large and round, rimmed a deep, ice blue that chills her to the core, but there is a spark in them, something human, something desperately clawing for control. They are not the same eyes that chased her into the woods and held claws against her throat.

Malia is still in control, but only just.

There are deep gouges in the concrete floor of the basement, thick, angry lines that circle back to Malia, as if she was trying to claw her way closer to Stiles.

Lydia did only specify the hardwood floor.

Stiles, on the other hand, greets her with a carefree wave; his posture is completely relaxed. He’s never looked so peaceful, and the juxtaposition between him and the girl on the floor is enough to make Lydia’s head spin.

“What’s up?” He asks her from his seat atop a box marked “FOURTH OF JULY”, as if this is a normal way to spend a Wednesday night. For Stiles, and how long he has been wrapped up in this supernatural mess, it might as well be.

Malia growls again when Lydia opens her mouth but she forces herself to press on.

“Scott’s lost control,” she says simply, trying to not let her fear affect her voice. “Kira asked me to come get you. We’re afraid he’s going to break through his chains.”

Stiles’ face drops at that. He looks between Lydia and Malia like they’re tearing him down the middle, tugging him apart at the seams, but Lydia’s hands are empty of him.

“Shit,” he curses quietly to himself. He runs a hand through his hair and sighs. “Why didn’t we just tie them up in the same room?”

“Don’t you remember Derek trying to control Erica, Boyd and Isaac by himself? They feed off of each other’s energy.” Lydia’s words don’t even seem to reach Stiles, who looks lost as he stares at Malia’s bound wrist. Her heart stumbles in her chest at the look. Stepping forward, she places a hand on his bicep and swears, “I’ll stay with her. I’ll keep her safe, I promise.”

Stiles snorts but keeps whatever comment he finds so amusing behind his lips. She’s thankful for that; she doesn’t think she can handle being on the receiving end of Stiles’ biting sarcasm, not right now, not when her defenses are too weak to throw anything back.

He turns away from her, crouches down in front of Malia as close as he’s able to get. Still, she swipes at him, bloodlust making her wild and mad.

“You think you’re the first person who wanted to rip my head off?” He asks her gently. Lydia can hear the smile in his voice. “Take a number. Look, Lydia’s gonna stay with you for a bit, okay? I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Malia strains harder against her bindings as Stiles stands and walks to the mouth of the stairs.

“Asshole.” She grunts at him. Lydia jumps at the words. It’s the first time she’s heard Malia talk since she started her struggle for control hours ago. Shame cuts at her; she didn’t know Malia could speak in this form.

Stiles doesn’t look offended by the expletive; the shake of his head is almost amused. He pauses on the first step, turns to Lydia and asks, “Why does this feel like a bad idea?”

“Because most of ours usually are,” Lydia shrugs. She doesn’t think before speaking, the words flowing with too much sincerity, “It’s fine. I’ve seen Jackson as a Kanima, and Aiden could _barely_ control his shift without his brother around. I’m **_not_ ** scared of Malia.”

She works to make her voice hard, to let everyone know the truth of them, but Stiles doesn’t look like he believes her. His face is twisted in a way that unintentionally hurts her, his doubt ringing loudly in the space between them, but he nods.

“Careful,” he tells her. “She gets mean.”

With one last look at Malia, he hurries up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

The air grows thick as soon as the heavy, cellar door closes. Lydia, who _used_ to be good at pretending, tries desperately to recover her old skill. She walks over to Stiles’ forgotten perch of a box like everything is normal, as if her heart isn’t running a marathon and her lungs aren’t inhaling and exhaling too fast to be of any use.

“Do you know what fear smells like?” Malia asks her, voice too guttural, letters and syllables catching on her sharp teeth.

“Can’t say I do,” Lydia says. Her words are airy, and they float away, up through the cracks in the ceiling. She wishes she could escape with them. It’s her fear Malia is referencing, afterall. “Being a banshee doesn’t come with too many perks, although I do know what death smells like.”

It’s probably not the best thing to say. She cringes as the words leave her mouth, suddenly thankful Malia can’t see her face. Some part of her, a part that’s afraid, a part that she loathes, can’t look at Malia. Instead, she stares at the wall of boxes, wondering when the Lake House become a storage unit.

“I know your fear,” Malia shares, like a secret, and Lydia freezes at the words. “I’ve always known it. Since we were young. It’s familiar. It used to make me want to protect you,” Lydia’s throat closes. She can’t breathe. Suddenly, she is a child in the forest with a mountain lion staring at her. Suddenly, she is helpless and afraid, and fear has always been Lydia’s fallback, but now everything is twisted. Now, the coyote is the one she needs to escape, and there is no savior coming for her. “But now I just want to feel your throat crack between my hands.”

Something sharp stabs in Lydia’s chest, like claws or a knife. It rips and shreds, cuts her to her core. Tears flood her eyes and Lydia clenches them, desperate to keep them in, afraid to give Malia ammunition as she scents the salt in the air.

“I’m sorry my emotions are so repugnant to you,” she forces herself to say. “Maybe you should stop breathing.”

There’s not enough bite in the words. It’s like she’s hurtling pebbles at a tank, and all it does is mow her over. The words almost hurt her more than Malia.

“Your emotions?” Malia snarls, and Lydia’s heart stops as she hears the squeak of the screws holding the support beam in place. “Of course! That’s all you’ve ever cared about, even when you were a stupid, selfish brat, crawling into _my_ den like you owned it. I should’ve killed you then, ripped you apart and feasted on your-”

The air turns to static.

Sometimes, when it's too quiet, she can hear a ringing in her ears; a silent scream, burrowing its way deep into her cranium and sliding down her spine, curving along the expanse of her torso and _squeezing_ her until she feels she might suffocate.

  
Sometimes, it's silent, almost too silent, like the calm before a storm and the sea before the tide pulls it back.

Sometimes, the quiet feels like it may engulf her, as if she will become lost in it.

These moments should scare her, but fear is the baseline of Lydia’s life. Fear has consumed her over and over again, and each time she rises from it. Something about her finds a strength in the terror, thrives in the adrenaline that feels like poison in her veins.

Fight or flight is a well documented biological process, something that occurs when living creatures feel their very being, livelihood, and safety are in peril. The natural response is instinctual, something ingrained, something impossible to ignore. For as much pain and sorrow resides in Lydia’s heart, something has always kept her feet planted like cement in situations where her logical, infallible mind tells her to abscond.

Right now, the storm is telling her to run. The thrumming in her heart is begging her to escape, to flee from the monster in front of her and protect herself. Go. Live another day. Salvage the carefully constructed catacomb of her mind from falling in on itself under Malia’s malicious words.

But everything else inside of her is begging the storm to swallow her whole. The foundation of her sanity cracks and crumbles in the wake of Malia’s hatred, but she can’t go. She can’t leave Malia here alone, angry and hurt and terrified, and she will never forgive herself if she, once again, leaves this hurricane of a girl who has once been her lighthouse so many times over.

Lydia is a shipwreck, drowning in Malia’s turbulent ocean current, a tidal wave of bad blood, and she isn’t sure which way to swim to find the surface. Every move she has ever made with this girl has been wrong; Malia pulls her down farther and farther, as if she’s trapped in seaweed, and Lydia doesn’t know how to escape from this mess she has created.

How do you quiet a storm that’s out of your control?

 _“Sometimes,”_ she remembers Scott saying, _“We lash out at the people closest to us because we trust them.”_

She wants so desperately to believe in this. She doesn’t know if Malia and her can ever fill the canyon of bad between them, but maybe, together, they can find the strength to build a bridge. Maybe they can meet in the middle of their hurt, and mend whatever is between them that keeps Lydia awake at night.

Alternatively, perhaps this will be the end of Lydia Martin, and she can finally fall into the warm embrace of death that shrouds her life in misery.

There are no screams building in her lungs, no warnings whispered in her ears, and soon Lydia is able to pull the world back into focus, to hear Malia’s wild caterwauling instead of the silence that had consumed her.

Malia, whose unintelligible, guttural, mumbling about what Lydia’s insides would look like painted across the basement floor, is turning more feral by the second. Her jaw is jutted out, hands longer than they were only a few moments ago, and her sharp teeth don’t fit in her mouth. It may be her mind playing tricks on her, but Lydia is sure she hears the beam creak again.

The crazy thing is: she doesn’t want to be afraid of Malia. She wants to believe that the beam will break and Malia will remember every moment they shared in their youth, will suddenly feel the torrential downpour of emotion that bogs Lydia down, will realize that maybe, after everything, she can learn to forgive the girl who abandoned her so many times over.

Lydia knows that this is a pipe dream, though. Only a month ago, Malia chased her into a forest and held claws to her throat. Only years ago, Lydia crawled into her den only to have teeth bite at her outstretched hand. She has crossed a line with this wild girl, one she can never recover from.

Fear is the normal reaction given everything. Lydia’s mind calculates it all, weighs which outcome is likelier, and mind numbing fear seems to be the only possible option. But, Malia was there for her when her whole world was falling apart. She was a young girl, alone and afraid, ostracized, with parents on the verge of divorce. Without Malia’s comfort and friendship, what would have become of her? Without Malia holding her together during the earth shattering quake of her youth, the world would have torn Lydia apart.

For months, she has struggled, desperately wanting to repay the favor, too afraid to step on toes, too worried of dredging up their shared past, too easily burned when her flimsy olive branches are returned, grotesque and gnarled at her feet. The desire to help this storm of a person chokes her, drowns her in grief and self loathing, but she doesn’t know how.

How do you fix years of wrong?

Lydia doesn’t know how to handle this. The last time she was with an out of control Malia, she brought her as close to Scott as she could. Scott isn’t able to help her this time, and all that’s left is Malia and her, and the basement that seems to grow smaller with each of Malia’s growls.

What does Lydia know about Malia? There’s too much and not enough. She knows almost nothing that would help her in this situation. They’ve never had a normal conversation, never sat down and talked like two friends. Malia has never trusted Lydia enough to be vulnerable with her.

But, there was a coyote who did.

She runs without thinking, rushes to the wall of boxes and begins tearing through them, one after the next. She has spent so many summers here that she must have left something behind. The lakehouse is practically a second home to her. The boxes get discarded to the floor, worthless and forgotten, glass figurines and trash breaking under her heels, and it’s three more boxes before Lydia is able to find it.

The book is small in her grownup hands, cover caked with a heavy layer of dust. She wipes it away and smiles fondly at the title, Sleeping Beauty. The bubble of nostalgia is harshly popped by Malia howling again, almost as if enraged by Lydia feeling a positive emotion in her presence.

It feels silly, and out of place, but it’s all she has, and all she can think of and, with a tremor in her voice, Lydia falls to the ground and begins to read aloud.

The effect isn’t instantaneous. Malia still growls and howls and slams her body into the pole holding her captive, bites at the chains trapping her wrist like she’s barely restraining herself from gnawing the limb off, and it’s on her third read through, just when Lydia plans to give up, when Malia begins to settle down.

The beast in front of her slowly shrinks, shoulders hunching in, harsh growls quieting to soft mewls. She recedes and transforms into a girl, one who makes Lydia’s heart stutter to stare at, one who watches her with still-blue eyes, too full of hurt and hate in equal parts. The emotion in them strikes through her like lightning. Lydia’s battered heart bleeds under their gaze.

So, Lydia doesn’t look up from the book. She reads and reads until the text is imprinted on her tongue, until she can recite it from memory alone. Her voice drones and dips, gentle and calming despite the rampaging in her head.

The prince and the princess meet as children. The princess is cursed with a spell, and is ushered into the forest, where she hides from the inevitable pain of the world. The prince meets her again, and he doesn’t recognize her anymore but still, he loves her anyway.

Lydia finds an unwanted, bitter, traitorous thought strangling her aorta: _how lucky is he that the princess loves him, too?_

The idea shocks her into silence. Her tongue is suddenly too thick for her mouth; her throat is stuffed with cotton. She closes the book, slamming the pages together and disrupting the dust that has settled in the spine, desperately trying to escape such a wild, renegade notion.

The only place to look is up into the squinted eyes of Malia. Her head is cocked to the side, a question on her now completely human face. Her eyes are still blue, and her hands are still sharp, but they’re folded neatly in her lap, and though those eyes make her feel as if ice water is flooding her veins, there’s nothing vicious in their gaze.

She looks… curious, as if she’s never seen Lydia before.

Her heart pounds madly in her chest, and Lydia prays to whatever malevolent deity who rules her life that she did not say that out loud.

“You used to read to me.” Malia states, a simple fact, but the words carry more meaning than she speaks them with. Or, perhaps, Lydia adds meaning to them that Malia doesn’t feel.

“You liked it, back then.” Lydia says, thankful that her voice doesn’t give away her fluttering lungs.

“It reminded me that I was human,” Malia mumbles, as if embarrassed to admit forgetting such a fact. She looks down at her hands; her nails are long, but they look more ‘Jersey Shore’ than ‘murderous werecoyote’. “I guess it still does.”

She’s unsure how to respond to that, too much sentiment sullying her tongue. She still remembers the pain of Malia’s rejection; Lydia has had too much practice ruining calm moments with this girl, and right now she desperately doesn’t want to do it again.

Lydia just wants to ask her, beg her, _what do you want, what do you need, how can I help you, how can I right every wrong I have ever done, how do we move forward when every step crumbles under my feet,_ but she is struggling to learn who Malia is, and her tongue is frozen in her mouth, too afraid, as if one more scathing dismissal will be the end of her and them and everything in between.

"It wasn't-" Malia starts, then seems to physically bite the words back, swallows thickly around them. Lydia leans forward, unable to bear not knowing what Malia is about to say in this rare moment of vulnerability. Malia takes a deep breath and relaxes as much as she can against the support beam, staring up at the ceiling to avoid Lydia's eyes. "It wasn't because of you. Last full moon. I didn't attack you because I was mad, or because of anything you did."

Lydia's stomach swoops at the words, at the implication, heart pounding at the mere idea of it even as her mind fights to reject it. 

"I know you think that I did, that I wanted to hurt you, but it wasn't about _you_ ," Malia spits quickly, the words slurring together so fast that Lydia only barely makes them out. "It wasn't about anything you did. It was all me. I was angry at myself, at everything I've ever done, and out of control, and all I could hear was your heartbeat. It just drew me to you."

Right now, Lydia's heart is pounding madly with shock, twitching nervously in her chest like it isn't sure what to believe, afraid to hope but so desperately needing to, stumbling from one beat to the next like it isn't sure if it wants to anymore.

After a long second, her entire body relaxes at the words, and it's only then that Lydia realizes just how tense she has held herself all these weeks, how much turmoil she has been carrying around. The load isn't completely gone, but she feels lighter, and it scares her, suddenly, how many emotions Malia can make her feel. 

"You didn't want to kill me?"

Malia makes a face, "Not _you_ , you. I didn't even know it was you until Scott and Derek pulled me out of it, and after, I just felt awful, and guilty, and then you showed up the next day and I. Coyotes don't have emotions. I'm still trying- I'm- I'm learning how to process mine. And what I did wasn't okay, and I don't expect you to forgive me, but what I did, and how I treated you after it was just. It wasn't right, but I need you to know it wasn't because of anything you've done. It was just. Me."

Everything in Lydia burns. 

The ramification of Malia's words are too much to consider, but it's all her mind will allow her to think of. She wants to pick apart the wording, Malia's facial expressions, the tone of her voice, wants to analyze everything until she can understand each little nuance. She wants to finally be able to paint a picture of this girl who doesn't hate her to her core, but she's afraid of what she'll see if she looks any deeper in this apology, what she'll hear in the words unsaid, what reality her paranoid mind will create. 

Analysis is paralysis; she can already feel her body locking up, as if kanima venom is surging through her veins. 

She wants, so desperately, to believe that this is Malia, standing in front of her, constructing a connection, trying to rebuild the bridges they have burnt, but she's suddenly, madly, more afraid than she's ever been. Malia threatening to see what her insides look like is one thing, but Malia gentle handing Lydia a life-raft in the sea of her own self loathing, of Malia making an attempt to try feels too big. She's suffocating under the weight of it. Falling from a hope that high could crush her. 

So, to distract herself, she checks her phone, surprised to find that it’s after 2 am. 

 **_We’re all good here,_ **  Stiles sent her half-an-hour ago.  **_How’s Malia? BTW did you know your grams had a TON of mountain ash at the dock?? wtf?_ **

****Lydia did not know that, and she would very much like to go on not knowing that, or the myriad of questions it presents. She doesn't know what to say to him, emotionally and physically exhausted, so she just texts back a thumbs up emoji and hopes he'll get the idea.

With a sigh, Lydia puts her phone back in her pocket and tells Malia, “Scott’s in control again. I think the worst of it is over.”

To Lydia’s surprise, Malia actually… smiles at her. It’s faint and uncomfortable, but it’s there. Lydia can’t recall a time where the girl gave her a look that wasn’t laced with poison.

It’s the first time in ages that Lydia is able to look this girl in the eye and not feel like her heart is being stepped on.

The cellar door opens; voices flood the basement, popping the bubble of intimacy that has slowly grown to envelope them so fast that reality almost burns her. Malia doesn’t look away, though, as if she’s unaware that the air has turned colder, like she doesn’t hear Stiles’ footsteps on the wooden stairs.

Lydia can't look away, wouldn't dream of it when Malia’s expression, the sincerity of it, the attempt of peace, warms her, from her head to her toes. She hears Scott's voice, laughing at something with Kira giggling behind him, but they sound so far away, as if they're in a whole other world.

Lydia just can’t help but smile back, allowing herself to feel hopeful for the first time in months.

_* * *_

They don’t talk about it. They don’t talk at all, in general, but especially about the cellar. Malia doesn’t grace her with another attempt at smiling, or anymore world crashing revelations. Lydia would feel heartbroken over it, would probably, again, be driven to the brink of insanity, except Malia is different.

She stands closer to her. She sits by her in Biology. She looks her in the eye when they pass each other in the halls. The simple acknowledgement is enough to get her through the day, sometimes.

“Do you want my pudding?” Malia asks her, under her breath, like she’s afraid to draw attention to them, as Scott and Kira tell Stiles about some Kitsune books they found in Noshiko’s closet.

The question is so out of left field that it shocks Lydia, and for a second all she does is stare at Malia, who is looking at her with too much intensity in her brown eyes. She vaguely wonders if this is a cruel trick, if Malia is waiting for her to reach out for the pudding cup before viciously snapping it back, like a mouse trap, crushing any hope of anything and everything and nothing between them.

The thought sours her mind, and she feels awful for thinking it, especially when Malia is staring at her like that, too much sincerity in her graze, hand too close to hers, pudding cup like an olive branch between them, and Lydia knows, intimately well, how it felt each time Malia snapped those branches like twigs between her teeth and returned them to her feet.

“Thank you,” she whispers back and, with hesitation, careful to not accidentally drag her fingertips across her hand, takes the cup from her.

Malia nods stiffly, like this is a fragile trade agreement patched between two warring countries. Lydia’s mouth opens, wanting to ask if this is a test, if she failed, if Malia still thinks of her as a selfish little girl, _if she wants Lydia’s fruit cup_.

Stiles cuts her off though, reminding Malia about getting dinner with his dad tonight, and it almost aches to see Malia smile reflexively at him, given so easily and freely.

Sullenly, she opens her pudding cup, feeling every bit of the toddler she is as she primly eats it.

Maybe things aren’t where she wants them, but she has to remind herself that it takes time to patch a hole in the wall.

At least Malia and her are no longer a crumbling building, suffocating under the weight of their own instability.

At least Malia doesn’t immediately stare at the ground Lydia is standing on, as if waiting for hell to swallow her whole.

At least if Malia isn’t smiling at her, she has the memory of it.

She doesn’t dare ask for more than that.


	4. You'll Love Me at Once, the Way You Did Once, Upon a Dream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for standing at my side while I took my sweet ass time finishing this. It's been quite a journey!!! Thank you so much for reading and sticking with this fic for so long!! And an unbelievable amount of applause to everyone who supported me during writing this, and to all of my tumblr followers who had to hear me complain endlessly about how this fic just wouldn’t. write. itself. You’re all incredible and I adore every one of you for reading this. :)
> 
>  
> 
> I feel like I left too many pieces of myself in this story. I don't know if I want them back.

No one prepares for the last day. No one knows when the last time you’ll see someone is, what you’ll say, how they’ll feel. There’s no warning before the rug is pulled out from under your feet, before the rules change and life stops and starts in one breath to the next.

They’re at the pond.

The fading remnants of summer still hang in the air, thick and heavy, refusing to give way to the cold snap of fall. California is always stubborn about its heat.

Lydia sits with her toes in the cold pond, sneakers and socks discarded haphazardly at her side. With a smile on her face, she watches her coyote snap and bite at the glass-like surface of the pool. Their fur is soaked, but their tongue lolls from their open mouth, and their eyes are wide and full of life, and Lydia can’t help but tilt her head back and laugh.

The coyote smirks at her, which is something Lydia long ago accepted- that she has found a wild coyote almost too human to bare, and pounces, splashing her all over with water.

She shrieks, propelling backward to hide from another onslaught, but even with her curses and pleas for shelter, Lydia has to admit that the water feels good. She spent almost the entire summer in her bathing suit, lounging in the water with her coyote at her side.

The first three days of 8th grade have been hell; she’s suddenly a fish out of water, in more ways than one.

When they’re dried off, towels wrapped around their shoulders and resting in the mouth of the den which has become Lydia’s second home, she tells her friend about it- the drama, the classes, the remodeled library, and, even worse, Jackson Whittemore’s wandering eyes.

“Mom says I “blossomed” this summer,” Lydia says, staring curiously at her now shapely legs. She supposes, somehow, like magic, her body become foreign to her; her hips are wide, chest full, and skin clear. With the right makeup tutorial, she could probably be mistaken for a woman. “And she’s not the only one who’s noticed.”

The coyote ticks their head curiously and looks at her as if trying to see what everyone else can.

Lydia blushes, suddenly self-conscious.

“People talk to me now,” she says, unsure of the words, like she’s admitting to something dirty, ashamed of how easily people looked over her before. “And they know my name beyond asking me the answer to math problems. I don’t- I don’t know how to handle it. I didn’t ask for, well, this!”

She gestures to her entire body, a home which she never asked to renovate.

“And, well, there’s these boys!”

The coyote huffs at that, and Lydia finds herself giggling, despite herself. She’s suddenly one of them, the girls during PE class, whispering and pointing from the stands while the boys trout around throwing basketballs.

“One boy, in particular…”

The boy, as far as the population of Beacon Hills Jr. High is concerned. Jackson Whittemore, with his perfect hair and perfect life, who sits behind her in their Social Studies class, who never would have given her the time of day last year, who taps his fingers on her shoulder, catching her curly, bouncy red hair between his fingers, and whispers, “Good morning, beautiful,” before the teacher can catch them.

She promised herself she would never be like this. She stares at her parents crumbling marriage, devoid of love, and grimaces at the sloppy, annoying kisses her peers would so publicly exchange, and swore to disavow herself of anything resembling this.

But Jackson is different. But Jackson makes her feel different.

“He just makes me feel noticed, you know?” Lydia asks the coyote, though she’s not sure her friend will understand. Surely animal courtship isn’t nearly as intimate as humans, is it? “Special, and cared for, in a way I never have before. He just looks at me like I’m something... Powerful.”

Lydia has never, in her entire life, felt the rush through her body that she gets when Jackson smiles at her.

“He invited me to this party tonight, and everyone who is anyone is going to be there. Can you imagine? Me! At a party! It doesn’t sound real, does it?”

Bookish Lydia, with her thoughts on literature and numbers, could never possibly be at a party. The two images can’t seem to mesh together in her head, the two pieces fighting and struggling to take control.

But she wants. She wants so desperately to be this girl, this compelling, almost-woman, who she feels she is when Jackson stares at her. She wants it more than she has ever wanted anything, and maybe, with Jackson at her side, she can become this person, transcend who she is directly into who she wants to be.

Her phone buzzes at her side, ricketting against the rock of the cave, reminding her that the party starts in a little over an hour. She yelps, staring at her dirty clothes and messy hair, cursing herself for wasting so much time talking at her coyote instead of getting ready.

“I have to go!” Lydia shouts, voice a sharp screech of panic. Her coyote blinks at her, clearly not understanding the gravity of the situation, but looking sympathetic all the same. They also look confused, staring between Lydia and the still high sun like this is a betrayal.

Lydia feels guilt eat at her heart. Can she really ditch her friend for a few hours of some boring party? She’s never wanted to even be this person, not before Jackson. A week ago she would have laughed at the prospect of abandoning her only friend just for some silly boy.

A week ago she didn’t know the power a tube of lipgloss had, either. Maybe this is part of growing up, she rationalizes.

“I have to go,” Lydia says again, gently, to not scare her friend. “But I promise I’ll give you all of the details tomorrow! And I’ll bring that book you like, okay? And I won’t leave until we finish it. How does that sound?”

Her coyote barks once at her, a loud and affirmative yes, and Lydia would laugh at their excitement if she wasn’t already seriously behind schedule.

The animal stands quickly and jumps up, standing on their back legs. Like this, they could almost be a person. Like this, Lydia can’t see any difference between them. Her coyote presses their paws into her shoulder, gentle, so their claws don’t snag, and licks once. When Lydia finally gives in and lets the happiness bubble through her, tips her head back to let the joy escape before it burns her, the coyote strikes again, swiping at her cheeks with their too wet tongue.

She almost doesn’t want to leave. It’s so rare that her coyote showers her with this type of affection. Usually, any contact is made by Lydia and Lydia alone. It goes against every instinct in her body to leave right now, but the curiosity tugs at her, and Lydia feels that if she doesn’t go to Jackson’s party, she’ll always regret it.

“I’ll be back tomorrow!” She promises over her shoulder, speeding to her purple bike parked at the church steps.

Lydia often wonders what she would have done differently had she known that tomorrow would never come.

* * *

Murphy’s law states that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. Lydia’s never put much faith in Mr. Edward Murphy, considering he only came to the conclusion given that he worked closely with some imbecile who incorrectly installed accelerator instruments on a rocket.

If Murphy cared that much about the rocket-sled experiment, he would have personally ensured that the accelerators were facing the right direction. Any fool knows to never leave anything important to chance.

And that’s how Lydia has tried to live her life- by not leaving simple, avoidable circumstances to fate. Lydia has always held herself to a certain standard and made herself personally accountable for meeting it.

Even at the height of her popularity, Lydia still ensured that her grades were always the best. Sometimes, that took long nights of finishing essays after getting home from parties, or telling Jackson she was grounded and couldn’t hang out, just so she could cram a study session before a big test.

The line between brainless, future trophy wife and brilliant, future fields medal winner was a tightrope act, one she often walked without faltering.

Things change, though, and after a year of near death experiences and heartache, Lydia finds herself feeling sympathy for Murphy. Sometimes, even when you think you’d triple checked every angle, things can go wrong.

Sometimes, everything that can go wrong, will go wrong.

Sometimes cruel, mean, meek little men decide to torture a girl who is truly trying her hardest to keep up.

Malia is getting a low C in their shared AP Biology class. Malia, who has struggled with the material from day one, who shouldn’t be anywhere near this class, who stubbornly refuses to complain to Morrell anytime Scott begs her to, is handed one of the most difficult projects Lydia has ever seen.

And, when Mr. Braun hands her the assignment sheet, he’s quick to send Lydia a devious, self-satisfied smirk.

Because Lydia has been so invested in Malia, in trying to protect her from the humiliation this man would bestow upon her, Lydia forgot to check her one weak spot, and Mr. Braun knew it. While he could not terrorize Lydia with what little power he has, since Lydia is able to take any question he throws at her, answer it perfectly, and turn it around to make him look small in front of the class, Braun has decided to torture Malia even more, whom Lydia bends over backwards to protect.

Lydia knows how to get people on her good side. She was born with a silver tongue and learned, early on, that her privilege grants her a power over people who might as well be peasants. She has made allies out of all of her teachers, but did nothing to hide her malcontent with Braun’s teaching/torture methods.

The pain of being made little more than a joke in front of his classroom by a seventeen-year-old girl has driven this man into a needless frenzy of revenge and now everything has gone wrong; Malia is collateral damage.

She never believed Stiles when he said Mr. Harris was out to get him up until his death; now, she understands intimately well.

“We’re switching,” Lydia demands to Malia, her tone brokering no room for argument.

Malia looks shocked at the way Lydia practically snarls, but the malice in her tone isn’t meant for her. The words are spat at the man’s back; his shoulders are too broad, spine too straight, and his swagger makes her want to cut him to his knees.

Malia is a traumatized girl whom, as far as this man knows, has spent the past nine years living like a wild child in the forest. For him to outright try to fail her, just to hurt Lydia, is disgusting.

She knows she should play nice, be the good girl whom everyone wants to help, bat her eyelashes and apologize to assuage his ego, but just the thought of him using Malia like this blinds her with rage, and every single logical idea disappears from her mind. Some part of her is screaming, be smart, be smart, be smart, but all she can see is red, all she can feel is anger and resentment, toward Braun but also toward herself for allowing this girl to be hurt once more.

“There will be no trading assignments,” Braun drones breezily, sauntering to the front of the classroom. “Switching will result in an automatic F and this assignment is worth a quarter of your final grade.”

The bell rings, startling the class into motion. Lydia doesn’t move, can’t take her eyes off of Braun’s weak spine. She wants to crush it between her teeth.

There’s a warm hand on her wrist, tugging her back to reality, and Lydia turns to see Malia staring at her with a pinched expression.

She whispers under the sound of scraping chairs, “I don’t know if banshees can shift into anything, but I don’t want to find out.”

There’s a second that stretches into infinity, where Lydia stares at Malia’s sun-kissed hand on her skin. Her heartbeat speeds up and, embarrassingly, it’s not entirely from anger.

She wrenches her hand out of Malia’s grasp, gives Braun’s back a dirty look, and stomps from the classroom, cursing wildly under her breath. In her haste, she almost forgets her schoolbooks and recorder, but she needs to get out of that suffocating man’s presence.

She’ll go to her mom. She’ll storm into the principal’s office. She’ll stand before the school district. She’ll yell at Marin Morrell. She will do anything and everything she can; she will make this world burn for piling shit upon shit atop a girl who has been crushed under the cruelties of life too many times over.

“Lydia, stop,” Malia calls, long legs and supernatural speed catching up to her easily. Her hand is at Lydia’s elbow and Lydia can’t handle it; she can’t fan the fires of her ire when Malia keeps touching her.

Malia lets her slip through her grip easily, startling Lydia for a second, so use to controlling touches and demanding voices and the absence of such almost scares her.

“He can’t just do that to you and get away with it!” Lydia self-destructive, hair billowing around her as she turns, air turning to static in her fury.

“Do what?” Malia asks, calm voice clashing with the madness that encompasses Lydia's entire being. “Give me an assignment?”

“Giving you that assignment!” Lydia says, words going faster than her enraged heart. “There’s no way you can do it.”

There’s a long second that passes, and Lydia clenches her eyes shut at the hurt that flashes across Malia’s face before it turns to stone.

“I see,” Malia says, words like ice. Lydia can physically see every ounce of progress built between the two of them crack and melt away like snow.

Every ounce of anger in Lydia’s body is rerouted; a thousand knives fire like arrows at her own heart.

“That is not what I meant-”

“Save it,” Malia growls. Her eyes flash blue and Lydia knows enough about her control to know that it’s on purpose, that Malia is giving her a warning. “I know I may struggle but I am just as capable as anyone else in that class. I know everyone wants me to switch out but have any of you considered that maybe I like Braun? That I like how he doesn’t treat me like I’m some fragile, broken thing who can’t understand anything?”

“There’s a difference between infantilizing you and looking out for you,” Lydia defends, even if it’s pointless. She can see that Malia has cut her off; the places where Malia touched her before now burn like hot coals against her skin. “He’s not doing this to challenge you, he’s doing it to punish me.”

The words make Malia take a physical step back from her. Lydia can see the breaks forming deeper between them but can’t seem to stop picking at them, self-destructing. First, she couldn’t protect Malia, and now she’s actively hurting her. Why can’t she just understand? Why does everything have to be so difficult between them?

“Maybe you’re just not as smart as you think you are,” Malia tells her, words like an ax to her heart, and then she’s gone.

Lydia watches her stomp down the hallway, people parting like the sea before her. Her hands are clenched into tight fists at her sides, and Lydia doesn’t doubt that there are claws deeply embedded in those palms.

In a few minutes, the bloody wounds will heal and all that will remain is smeared crimson and a pounding heart.

Lydia wishes their relationship could have supernatural healing as well. Instead, they are a bone that keeps breaking, over and over again, fracturing into smaller and smaller fragments. They never even get to take off the cast.

And sometimes, at night, she worries Malia will just amputate the troublesome limb altogether.

She is not a banshee but a wraith, sucking the life out of anyone and anything that enters her orbit. Maybe, instead of trying to mend the break, she should be the one handing Malia the bone saw.

* * *

Lydia does nothing.

It aches. Every breath is an all-consuming throb of pain. Every second without justice or vindication feels like nails hammered into her skin. Every time Malia avoids her eyes, Lydia feels her heart momentarily shut down.

But still, Lydia does nothing, because it’s what Malia wants. She wants to be challenged, or whatever that means. She wants to play this cruel man's game and she wants to win, and Lydia can respect that just as much as it drives her mad.

She wants so desperately to protect her from the mess that Lydia has created, but Malia is adamant about saving herself.

And so, Lydia works on her assignment. She doesn’t tell Scott about her concerns, even when he asks three times, and she doesn’t ask for updates on Malia’s own project, which she has heard Stiles bemoan about the intricacies of during lunch.

Malia doesn’t comment on the matter, besides kicking Stiles under the table, her harsh expression cut from stone.

It kills her to do so, but Lydia manages to go two weeks without letting any concerns or questions leave her lips. She has had far too much practice with tying her vocal chords in knots. Besides, it’s easy to control herself when she remembers the pain on Malia’s face.

She still can’t believe she said that, but also hates how her words were twisted and misinterpreted, made into something cruel when she had no intention of them being so. She wants to tell Malia that it’s okay, that she doesn’t have to prove anything or rush through school to catch up with the rest of them, that acknowledging that she’s been hurt and needs time is okay, expected, even, but Malia is stubborn and wild and impressively good at acclimating.

Lydia supposes she would admire her for all of these things, if they weren’t keeping her awake at night.

Lydia supposes she admires her anyway, no matter the scenario.

* * *  
In the end, Lydia gets an A- on her project. The minus is a needle, stabbing into her eye, drilling a hole through her brain, and out through her skull; Braun’s the one driving it in. He gives her a smirk as she reads her grade and her eye twitches, a phantom pain.

“I have to say I’m surprised, class,” Mr. Braun says, standing at the front of the room. “Only half of you got lower than a C on this assignment. You should be proud. Now, to keep your minds from turning back to sludge over Winter Break, I’ll be assigning you pages 183-190 in your workbooks. It’s due the first day back.”

In the narrow space between where Braun stops talking and before her peers can whine about the additional homework, the bell rings, effectively drowning out both. Lydia would be annoyed by the homework assignment if she wasn’t too busy trying to subtly read Malia’s expression.

The girl gives away nothing. Lydia can’t tell if her grade is good or bad, or if she’s fighting the urge to rip out the man’s throat.

Would she stop her? Lydia imagines the scenario happening as student’s shuffle out of the classroom, and can't see any reality in which she pulls the werecoyote back.

“Ms. Martin!” Braun says, and the tone of his voice lets Lydia know he’s been calling her for a while now. “I know the horror of a less than perfect grade has possibly sent you into a catatonic state, but I do need to speak to you.”

When Lydia looks up, everyone else is gone. She blinks up at Braun’s twisted, cold expression, and wishes for some type of buffer between them, or alternatively a knife.

Lydia flips her binder closed, squares her shoulders, and asks, “Is it about how you wrongfully gave me a 92% when we both know my assignment is at college level?”

“Just because you are taking this class as an extracurricular does not mean you know everything, Ms. Martin,” Braun sneers, but Lydia notices he makes no move to explain exactly what she did wrong. She raises an eyebrow in a way that always made Jackson feel small, despite how she was looking up at him. Braun, quickly, looks away, gathers himself, and then back at her, “No, it’s actually about Ms. Tate’s grade.”

Lydia’s stomach drops like a stone. Just the mention of Malia from his mouth makes her hands tighten into fist on her lap. That familiar anger that made her, unthinkingly, spit such harsh words at Malia travels up her spine, flames licking at her chest.

“What of it?” Lydia asks. “Did you decide to fail her on no other merit than your disdain for me?”

“I know you think of me as a bully, Ms. Martin-”

“Actually, Mr. Braun, I see you as a wretched, misogynistic, egotistical man who has been inferior to me ever since I walked into your Geology class Freshman year.”

There’s a beat where the vindication of seeing such a revolting person shocked into silence sends warmth through Lydia’s entire body, and all she can do is smile her prettiest, most perfect smile at the vile man.

He coughs uncomfortably and fixes his thick glasses, highlighting his sickly, pale skin.

“If you keep that mouth up, Lydia, you’ll be here every day of Winter Break for detention. Do I make myself clear?” He says, and the threat is enough to make Lydia bite back her words of indignation. Braun stands and pompously walks closer to her lab table. “Be that as it may, I should be giving you those detentions anyway. I know you helped Ms. Tate on her project.”

Lydia falls forward like a puppet with their strings cut, shock temporarily shutting down her brain. It’s unfortunate how the tables turn so quickly.

“What? What are you talking about?”

“Malia. She turned in an incredibly well done B+ project, and we both know she’s not nearly able to do that alone. Admit it. You did it for her.”

And, immediately, Lydia understands all of Malia’s anger and hurt. Lydia feels anger on Malia’s behalf for what Braun has just spat in her face; she can’t imagine the pain Malia felt when someone she has such a confusing relationship with basically said the same thing.

Malia tries so hard to be everything that everyone expects her to be. She wants so desperately to be normal. The girl is hungry for every piece of humanity she has missed out on. More than anything, she wants to succeed, and she wants people to believe in her, and she just wants to be better than what she should be.

And Lydia almost took that from her. Lydia almost held her back.

Wasn’t it Lydia herself who advised Stiles against tricking Malia into accepting aid with her school work? “If Malia needs help, she knows how to ask for it,” Lydia remembers saying. So why couldn’t she follow her own advice?

“How dare you,” Lydia hisses, not knowing if she’s speaking to herself or Braun. She shoves herself away from the table; the lab stool crashes back against a neighboring desk, clattering loudly in the silence of the room. “You give her an impossible assignment and then you’re upset when she succeeds? You’re even more of a monster than I thought you were.”

“Stop acting like a toddler throwing a tantrum,” Braun demands, slamming his fist down on the table for emphasis. His narrowed eyes are drilling into her, but Lydia refuses to back down. She wants to slap him, hit him, scream in his disgusting face until his eardrums burst. “Yes, I gave her a harder assignment than the rest of the class. Yes, I did it to get you to stop acting like an arrogant know-it-all, but, while Malia’s assignment was difficult, you had no right to take a learning opportunity away from her by-”

“First off, I did no such thing. Never have I risked my academic reputation and I resent that you’d rather call me a cheater than admit that, maybe, you underestimated Malia. Secondly, again, how dare you?! You gave her the hardest project in the class and, fully knowing her past trauma and struggle with your material, you have the gall to call that a learning opportunity? At least call it what it was, Mr. Braun. You only did it to punish and provoke me, and that is cruel and sickening.”

“You insufferable-”

“Don’t you dare finish that sentence,” Lydia cuts him off, quickly and more efficiently than a blade. “Malia is worth far more than what you’ve done to her. I know her, and I know she did everything in her power to do that assignment and do it well. She more than earned that B+. She is tenacious and adaptive and brilliant, and I cannot believe you were so threatened by that you tried to squash out her light. You are a tiny, insignificant man, and I will take great pleasure in sending this conversation to the school board and watching as your career burns around you.”

Lydia brandishes the recorder she uses in every class to aide in her note taking like a sword, too angry to even feel delighted at the way Braun’s mouth opens and closes, gaping like a fish that forgot how to swim.

There it is. The power. The rush of dominance that seeps into her brain like a drug. Lydia almost gets dizzy on it, on the whirlwind of endorphins that flood her at the despair in Braun’s expression. She wonders, absently, if this makes her a bad person, that she enjoys making this man squirm, but remembers, harshly, who the true monster here is.

“What was Malia’s official grade?”

“...a D.”

Lydia wants to rip his face off. Instead, she demands, “Give her the grade she earned, and I’ll keep this conversation between us. Back off. Treat her like any other student. I can take anything you throw at me and, clearly, she can too, but if you have an issue with me, leave it with me. Do we have an understanding, Mr. Braun?”

Braun struggles to breathe for a long second, gasps, “You’re a horrible little girl.”

“And you’re a putrid piece of scum,” Lydia smiles at him. “I’m just the wrong woman to mess with.”

She takes her time packing up her things, letting Braun see her cool and composed demeanor, giving him a chance to think through her proposal, letting him know that she’s not bluffing. Lydia would be more than happy to end this man’s career, but she’s beginning to understand Malia, this version of her, and just knows, in her gut, that Malia wouldn’t want anyone to know.

She wouldn’t want to be seen as the victim.

Lydia can understand that more than anyone.

She leaves the room with a swagger in her step. She feels more like her old self than she has in a long time, more than when she was pretending, more than when she was self-destructive. She’s a ten-year-old girl again, fearless and hopeful.

All of that leaves her when she sees Malia standing in an empty hallway, her books hanging loosely in her lifeless hands, her face frozen in shock, and her eyes hidden behind a thin layer of water.

“Malia,” Lydia gapes, heart pounding madly in her chest. “I- you weren’t supposed to hear that.”

Malia doesn’t react to her words.

Her silver tongue melts to lead, poisoning her bloodstream. “I didn’t- I know you didn’t want me to intervene, but he forced my hand. I didn’t do it on purpose. I didn’t do it to hurt you-”

“Thank you,” Malia whispers, but the words are screaming in Lydia’s eardrums. “For the things you said about me.”

She looks Lydia in the eyes, too deeply, with too much emotion in them, and Lydia feels vulnerable and terrified and, strangely, like she’s soaring.

Lydia opens her mouth, not knowing what to say, not knowing how to say anything at all, not anymore, but Malia turns too quickly and escapes down the hallway, leaving Lydia, alone, like she’s left Malia so many times before.

* * *

She gets the call from Scott after dinner.

Lydia’s doing the dishes, a small apology to her mother for being such a bad daughter lately, when her cell phone buzzes across the counter.

“It’s Malia,” he says, without even a hello. Her stomach swoops at the words, mind conjuring horrible images of Malia with an arrow in her side or some horrible monster’s claws wrapped around her neck, but Scott barrels on, “She knows.”

“Knows what?” Lydia demands, the dishes a long forgotten task. She’s eyeing her keys, wondering if she’ll need to make a quick escape or help corral Malia to the preserve again.

There’s a quick beat of silence on the phone, like Scott is afraid to say the words, like they’ll become real when he does; Lydia calls his name again, desperate to know if Malia is in danger.

His breath is a shuttering shake, and the words don’t sound real, “Peter. Peter found her and told her the truth.”

Her hand tightens around the phone; it creaks in her grip. She thinks of Peter Hale with electricity held to his throat, his hands wrapped around her shoulders, shaking her, begging to know what Talia took from him, the swell of a stomach and his hand, so gentle, on it.

In another life, he may have been a good father.

In this one, he is a burnt and broken thing, using anyone and anything to build the pyre of his life. All Peter Hale knows how to do is burn.

“Where is she?”

Here he is, trying to set Malia’s world ablaze like his has been turned to ash so many times over. She will not let him touch Malia with his soot-covered hands. She will not let him twist her like he has twisted so many before.

The scars throb on her side, a reminder of his red eyes and biting teeth and unrepentant selfishness.

“We don’t know. Her and Stiles got into a huge fight over it- Peter told her that we all knew and Stiles couldn’t deny it and she left.” Scott chokes around the words. Lydia can feel his guilt, the constant noose around his neck tightening. “How did he even find out? Have you seen her? Do you know where she might go?”

“She might be with Peter,” Lydia hears herself say, her mouth and brain working on autopilot even as her heart goes numb and cold in her chest. “Even if she’s not, you should still find him and-”

She stops. The only words out of her mouth next are things that Scott would never do. In her mind, she makes plans and contingencies. Being around Peter makes her feel like she has one foot in a viper pit, but this isn’t about her. It’s about Malia.

He’s crossed ten different kinds of lines. He’s hurt this girl who is drowning in her suffering already.

He had no right.

“Trust me,” Scott says. “We’ll deal with Peter later. Our priority right now has to be Malia. Stiles says she was… Distraught. We shouldn’t have lied to her.”

“We were protecting her,” Lydia insists, voice a sharp hiss. She thinks of Scott and teeth in his side, his wide-eyed youth ripped away as he was forced into a world of monsters and mayhem. She thinks of herself, her mind torn open, rearranged without her consent. Peter has tried to make them both such monstrous things. “We both know exactly how manipulative he is-”

“No,” Scott says. “We were protecting ourselves. We took that choice away from her because we didn’t want to deal with the outcome.” Lydia scoffs and opens her mouth to argue, but Scott refuses to let her. “Look, were you protected when I didn’t tell you that Jackson may be the kanima? Were you protected when we didn’t tell you about a murderous werewolf running around Beacon Hills? What about when I knew Aiden was-”

“Stop it.” Lydia snaps, heart thumping as the images fly through her head, her whole, painful past dug up and handed to her on a silver platter. “Hurting me isn’t going to help you find Malia.”

The phone line between them is a yawning abyss of words left unsaid.

Scott has already apologized a hundred times over, and she has forgiven but it doesn’t mean Lydia is ready to forget. Her hurt feelings can be compartmentalized, though; they can wait until she knows Malia is safe, from either Peter or them, she’s not sure.

Lydia grabs her car keys and says, “I’ll check the lake house, and I’ll text Kira the coordinates of her old coyote den.”

Scott’s breath of relief thaws her silent heart, and she tries desperately to assure the both of them, “We’ll find her.”

* * *

They don’t find her.

The four of them check everywhere they can think of, upturning every rock in Beacon Hills but to no avail. Malia is gone, and Scott can’t find her, not when her trail tracks all over the entirety of the town.

“She was trying to trick me,” Scott says, refusing to meet her eyes. “That means she’s still in control. She just… doesn’t want to be found.”

Stiles curses, quick and under his breath, and rubs at his red, splotchy face with a shaking hand.

The cold of Winter nips at Lydia’s exposed skin, reminding her that it’s 2 AM in December and she’s wearing shorts. It’s been raining off and on all day, but Lydia's legs looked particularly amazing this morning and she couldn’t resist. At the time, she didn’t know she would be searching for the source of all her world’s pain.

Even if she did, she probably still would have chosen to wear shorts.

“What do we do?” Stiles asks. “We can’t just leave her out here. Not when she doesn’t know our side.”

“What side?” Lydia scoffs. Her eyes bounce around the street, hoping Malia will magically appear and forgive her. Lydia thinks, sadly, that she’s run out of Malia’s mercy. “We lied to her. End of story. We’re the bad guys, and he’s twisted it to be the innocent father we kept her from.”

“We can make another loop,” Kira suggests, gently touching Stiles’ bicep. “We haven’t tried the old subway track, have we? And we haven’t even asked Satomi and her pack for help.”

“No,” Scott says, finally looking up from the floor. He squares his shoulders, “Malia doesn’t want to be found. We know she’s in control, and we know she can handle herself. If she wanted us to find her, we would have by now. The best thing we can give her right now is space. If she needs to isolate to come to terms with this, then that’s fine. We’ll all be here to support her when she’s ready. Alright?”

In the end, it’s the only plan that feels right, even if it still feels wrong. Lydia lets Stiles drive her home, both of them silent, thinking of Malia and the cold night and the aching hurt she must be experiencing alone.

“We should have killed him when we had the chance,” Stiles says, turning into her driveway.

“How many teen girl’s pain is enough for him?” Lydia asks, leaning her forehead on the cool window. “How do you think he found out?”

“I don’t know. You said you left Talia’s claws at the loft, right?”

“Yeah, only because Allison and I had to electrocute him to get out of there,” Lydia says, shuddering at the memory. “I just assumed Derek took the claws with him when he left to find Cora. They were the last thing of his mother’s, weren’t they?”

“To be fair,” Stiles says, “It’s weird enough that the guy lugged them around after the fire for so long. I’d like to think he emotionally healed enough to stop carrying that with him. Literally and figuratively.”

Lydia snorts at that.

“I don’t know,” Stiles shrugs, fiddling absently with his headlights. “Maybe he figured out how to access his memories. Maybe he looked through adoption records. Maybe he’s guessing. Maybe he just remembered.”

“Maybe,” Lydia agrees. She’s too exhausted for this theorizing, emotionally and physically. She wants to go to sleep and wake up tomorrow to find that Malia has forgiven all of them, that this storm has passed with her eyes closed. “It doesn’t matter how he figured it out. What matters is why he confronted her with it. I swear, if he’s doing this to make her vulnerable and use her for some machiavellian plot I will whip up another molotov cocktail.”

Stiles laughs at a memory that seems like so long ago, and Lydia finds herself joining in, fatigue making her absurd.

They were so young back then, even if it was only a year ago. So much has happened; a time where she didn’t know of supernatural creatures, wasn’t one herself, seems like a completely different world.

Their laughter slowly dissipates to quiet melancholy, suddenly reminded of everything they’ve experienced and lost, including their own innocence.

Lydia can’t handle the energy in the car anymore, too thick and heavy and painful, and grabs at the Jeep’s door handle, desperate for an escape.

“Malia told me,” Stiles says quickly, stopping her from leaving. Her heart stumbles in her chest, tripping over itself, unsure if it wants to go faster or stop altogether. “I know that you knew her when you were younger. When she was a coyote. I just... I didn’t know how to bring it up.”

“How long?” is all Lydia can ask, forcing herself to not look at him. She needs to know how long he’s been judging her; how long has he been hating her for every wrong she’s ever done?

“After the first full moon. After the- uh, the incident. When you called and you guys talked outside my house,” Stiles whispers. She can feel him staring at her, but his tone is devoid of any emotion, and she’s afraid to look at his face, of what she’ll see there. “She stormed back inside and broke my chair; she was furious, Lydia. It took me ages to get her to calm down, and then, when I did, she just kept crying, and she wouldn’t stop.

“I’d never seen her cry before,” Stiles says, mostly to himself, but the words cut through Lydia’s heart like bullet holes.

She thought she was the only one who walked away from that conversation in pain; she hadn’t even considered that Malia had been hurt as well. And everything that had happened after that: Lydia becoming an ice queen, reverting back to destructive habits, blocking out the pack.

While she was feeling sorry for herself and acting selfish, Stiles was there to hold Malia together after Lydia ruined her again.

Lydia feels razor wire wrap around her ribcage, curling around her spine.

“I know things are a mess right now,” Stiles says, “but I guess I just wanted to say thank you.”

The world freezes; the blood in Lydia’s veins turns to ice at his words. The wire cuts through her, tearing her insides to shreds.

“You were there for her after she had killed her mom and sister.” Stiles says gently, and it feels so foreign. She’s never heard Stiles talk without his biting sarcasm, but he isn’t being mocking or flip. This serious side of him scares her, scares her even more because he’s using it to be kind. “You reminded her that she was human. You kept her from being alone for all of those years.”

“Yeah,” Lydia agrees, bitter, “And then I ripped it all away from her without even saying goodbye.”

“Yea, okay, sure,” Stiles says. Lydia’s eyes clench tight, begging for Stiles’ wrath to be swift and to the point. “But for the time you were there, you helped a lot.”

Her eyes snap open. She expected a killing blow and was instead struck by a soft feather, and now everything feels wrong, like she missed a step on the stairs.

She doesn’t know what to do in the face of Stiles’ casual understanding and gratitude. How can he not see the festering rot of her soul? Out of all people, Lydia expected Stiles to be able to call a spade a spade. Malia is his girlfriend, after all.

All at once she wants to hug and punch him.

Instead, she does neither. Lydia nods at him, contorts her face into some semblance of a smile, and runs from the car, desperately fleeing the confusing emotions that follow her.

This forgiveness is given to her so freely and easily feels wrong, proving once again that she is undeserving of their kindness and selfless love. She is a black hole, greedily consuming all of them, taking and taking until there will be nothing left.

Isn’t that what she does best? Isn’t that why, in the end, everything she touches becomes some broken thing?

Lydia flexes her hands, feeling that self destructive itch curl like a seductive lover around the frayed edges of her soul. It would be easier, and better, to cut these people from her life altogether.

The pain of letting them see her decaying heart surely can’t be worse than cutting them from her life. Lydia Martin is a plague of a person; a banshee whose touch drives all of those who love her away from her, even if they have to escape into a grave.

A noise clatters upstairs, drawing her away from her spiraling mind.

“Mom?” she calls into the foyer, even though she didn’t see her mother’s familiar white car in the driveway.

She grips her phone in her shaking hand and tries to draw every ounce of courage she has left in her heart. It’s not much, but it’s enough to get her to take a step upstairs, and then another.

The house is silent now, or maybe she can’t hear anything above her maddening, pounding pulse in her ears.

At the door to her bedroom, Lydia pauses. She remembers, after all, what happened the last time she was here, alone, when Malia had disappeared. She remembers the fear that felt like a knife to her throat, the way she could barely think, let alone move.

Lydia looks to the cellphone in her hand, thumb running over the glass surface as she debates calling Scott. He wouldn’t think twice about looking around her house for her, and he’s definitely more suited for dealing with intruders than she is. She swipes at the screen, carefully taking a step backward.

Her foot stills, midair, as she hears a voice scoff, “Of course.”

Before she can even think, Lydia has the door opened.

It’s dark in her room; the hallway light shines in a line that is almost devoured by the darkness. Still, even in the absence of anything, Lydia knows it’s her; something in her soul rattles, echoes a twin pain at the sight of her. She can smell dirt of the forest in her room and, when she squints, she can see the familiar outline of this strange girl, curled into a tiny ball of hurt by the window.

Lydia takes a breath, finger scrambling to find the light switch on the side of the wall.

It doesn’t surprise her that it’s Malia. She is surprised, though, by the way her heart leaps and cracks in her chest, at war with the joy of finding her, safe, and the pain of confrontation.

Malia looks worse than a wet dog. Her hair and clothes are drenched, sticking to her uncomfortably as if she jumped in a pool. Her skin is pale from the cold, cheeks hollowed and sunken in as if she’s spent all day running and hasn’t had anything to eat or drink. It’s her eyes that cut Lydia deepest, though. They’re deep set and haunted; the dark circles under them make Malia look like a corpse.

It’s like that day in the woods all over again, like Scott has roared and shoved her back into human skin- hair in a tangled mess, body underfed, muscles no longer knowing how they should work.

All of Lydia’s instincts tell her to draw this girl a warm shower and hand her a towel, but Lydia knows Malia would refuse such human things on mere principle right now.

Wasn’t it Stiles who tried so hard to make her human? Wasn’t it Stiles who she trusted the most out of all of them? Wasn’t it Stiles who first suggested they lie to her face? He’s the one who held her hand in the hallways, patiently helping her relearn everything coyotes don’t need to know; it was him who cared for her when all Lydia did, all Lydia ever does, is hide.

But she didn’t go to Stiles, even though his jeep was outside. She’s here, and Lydia is more than willing to be whatever she needs right now. Lydia will carve herself open to show Malia how sorry she is, but she doesn’t think it will help.

Some betrayals can’t be repaired. Some mistakes can’t be taken back.

She hopes she lives long enough to see Peter Hale’s head on a spike.

Malia stands, swaying on shaking limbs, not from weakness but from wrath.

“He knew,” Malia says, words spitting angry, fire coiled around her tongue.

Lydia doesn’t say anything, can’t, in the wake of Malia’s fury. She wants, desperately, to grab at this girl, curl her into her arms and soak the suffering out of her like a sponge. This isn’t fair. No one should have to endure such continuous agony with no reprieve.

“I know,” Lydia says, unsure if she’s acknowledging Stiles’ crimes or admitting to her own.

“He didn’t tell me,” Malia says, pacing now, hands coiled into fists at her sides. “We were supposed to tell each other everything and he didn’t tell me.”

“I hate him,” Malia swears. Her hands open and close, tendons standing out sickeningly from her taught skin like she's fighting to keep claws in. “Him and all the rest of them.”

Lydia takes a step toward Malia, and when that isn’t met with a snarl, she takes another. Malia is a hurricane on the verge of destruction; what else is Lydia supposed to do but drown with her?

Her hand is shaking, but Lydia doesn’t pull it back. All she can see is a coyote biting at an outstretched hand, but Lydia doesn’t care if she’s going to lose a limb. She doesn’t care about herself in this instant; how can she even think of her own safety when Malia is standing in front of her, howling for some form of tenderness in a world that has only given her grief?

Malia folds like origami at her touch, caving in, trying to become something so small and so insignificant that the demons that haunt her will no longer see her. Lydia grips her tight and pulls her close, covers the tan skin, so coated with shame and hate and ash, tries to fill the yawning abyss of emptiness inside this girl’s chest with her own broken form of love.

She wants to badly to reach inside Malia’s heart and scrape out the despair, but all she has are her broken, decaying hands that only know how to spread the blight of devastation.

Malia’s ribs shiver, shoulders shaking as her body is wracked with sobs. She falls into Lydia’s arms like they’re the only thing holding her together, like she’s trying to sink into Lydia’s skin and hide there until the storm is over. The sharp chin at Lydia’s collarbone should be painful, but she tugs her closer, digs it in deeper, needing, desperately, to know that this girl is real, needing, frantically, for Malia to know she is not alone this time.

The world has left this girl to rot; Lydia has only been a helping hand in the wreckage, aiding in the destruction of a creature once so beautiful and fierce. She has helped the world steal any moment of happiness, and as she holds Malia against her chest, Lydia wishes to give it all back.

She will hollow herself out until there is nothing in her chest. She will give and sacrifice until all that is divine and holy gives back to Malia what it has selfishly taken.

But there are no Gods or Devils to make deals with today. There is only Lydia and Malia, and the sinking feeling that all she can do is this and pray that it will be enough.

She loses track of how long they sit there, rocking back and forth, as if Lydia can shake the pain out of her, but eventually, Malia grows tired of the clothes sticking to her skin, and Lydia doesn’t say anything as she pushes her toward the shower she once dyed her hair in.

Neither of them look too closely at the claw marks in the tile.

While Malia sits on the floor of the shower, letting the hot water rush over her like a waterfall, Lydia quietly throws the dirty clothes into the washer and roots around for comfortable, warm clothes.

It isn’t until Malia is sitting on the edge of Lydia’s bed, dawned in Lydia’s Beacon Hills High sweatpants and her dad’s forgotten white undershirt, does Lydia realize she has no idea what to do next. Should she have texted Scott? Would Malia have seen that as a betrayal?

What’s one more fire on the log? Lydia’s already burnt up every chance she has ever had with this girl, but she’s still here. She came to Lydia while her world was falling down, and she let Lydia comfort her.

She doesn’t have time to analyze what it all could mean.

Malia, still staring out the window into the dark depths of night, says airily to the void, “I just don’t understand how he could betray me like this.”

Lydia bites her lip, forcing the storm of questions down, down, down. Malia has to know that Lydia knew, that she was the first to know, in fact. Does she know that Lydia and Allison found out so long ago? Could Peter possibly have figured out that they all met at Scott’s house, huddled in his bedroom, whispering aggressively to each other about what they should do to keep from crumbling under a secret this big?

Lydia locks her lips. Maybe it’s selfish of her, but she doesn’t want to ruin this moment. Malia came to her for comfort, and Lydia will bend over backwards to be that for her.

It’s her plan, until Malia says, “I don’t understand how any of you could have kept this from me.”

All that effort she used to keep her words trampled down and suddenly she has no thoughts at all. Her mind is blank, every single possible sentence and explanation ripped from her until she is nothing.

Malia is looking at her now, brown eyes wide, and even through the pain, it breaks Lydia’s heart to see the desire, longing for trust. Malia wants, more than anything, to believe in them, even when they have lied to her and hurt her, even when Lydia herself has hurt her more than she can count.

She can’t look into those big eyes and lie, can’t make up a symphony excuses, can’t control her caterwauling heart to get Malia to see reason. Suddenly, looking at her punched expression, her haunted eyes, Lydia realizes that Scott is right.

All she has is her truth, and that’s all Malia has ever wanted.

“Peter Hale is horrible, Malia,” Lydia says, and though her words don’t stutter, her voice is small, afraid, as if speaking his name will make him appear. “He ruined this town; he killed countless of people; he destroyed my life, Scott's life, Allison's life,” the words catch in her throat, choking on them and the pain that comes with simply her name. She needs to take a deep, rattling breath before moving on, “He manipulates teenage girls like it's his favorite past time, Malia. I couldn't let you be around that, not when you were so scared and alone.”

“Well guess what, Lydia?” Malia's laughter is bitter; it scrapes like razor wire Lydia's ear drum, “Now I'm scared and alone and it's your fault. Again.”

Lydia bristles at that. Despite the voice in her ears screaming at her to stand down, it's like she's in the woods all over again, like she's stumbled into a coyote's den and isn't smart enough to walk away. It hurts to have her every traumatic experience minimized by this girl who holds such a large place in her heart. She has no right to, but Lydia feels betrayed by Malia’s flippant response.

  
“You can’t just put that on me-” Lydia snaps before catching herself losing control. Malia is mad. She’s lashing out. Just because she let Lydia comfort her earlier doesn’t mean she won’t bite at her now.

“Why did you come here?” Lydia finally asks. She is suddenly exhausted, so tired of walking on eggshells, no longer wanting to be the villain in the story between them. “Scott could tell you all of this. What do you want from me?”

“I want you!” Malia demands suddenly, as if this has been more than obvious. She bounces on the bed with the force of her response. “I want you in my life, and you have shown me time and time again that you would rather bite your leg off than be in it!”

“That is not fair,” Lydia says, refusing to back down. This conversation has built and built and now is not the best time to have it but it’s all she has, anymore. She doesn’t know if she and Malia will ever get another tomorrow after this conversation, but she needs, desperately, to know where she stands here. She can’t handle the surprise of getting her heart broken over and over when she’s planning to finally reveal it. “You can’t possibly tell me that this is all my fault. I’ve made a mountain of mistakes but I tried, Malia. Maybe I didn’t try soon enough but I offered you olive branch after olive branch and you refused all of them. I wanted to be there, but I needed to know that you wanted me first.”

“Why! Why was it all on me? I was hurt, Lydia. You abandoned me. Of course I wasn’t going to give you an invitation back into my life the first time I see you. You wanted me? You should have fucking,” Malia stops suddenly, chest stopping, hands stilling. She deflates like a balloon, and Lydia has never seen her look so small. “I was hurt. I was confused. If you wanted to be in my life, you should have been there for me. I took your absence as a sign.”

For once in her life, Lydia doesn’t know how to respond.

“I wasn’t in a good place. I needed someone, and you were the only one who knew me, and you acted like I was a stranger for months until I almost killed you. And now I’m here because my world is falling apart, again. I don’t know why I came here, Lydia. Maybe I thought you would, for once, care enough about me to give me what I need.”

They took the choice away from her, all because they didn’t know how to deal with the fallout. Lydia herself, who has been twisted and tormented so many times all because her friends couldn’t bear to tell her the truth, should have known this lesson better than anyone. If she cared about Malia like she claims to, then Lydia should have been there to support her, to help her make a decision. She definitely shouldn’t have been the first in line, advocating to take it away from her.

So, Lydia gives her the choice she wants so badly.

The shirt’s cotton material suddenly turns to tissue in her angry, desperate hands; threads snap and buttons pop as she forces it off of her, quick to get this over with. She tosses the top behind her, the tank top following suit.

Before she can rethink it, Lydia is standing, shaking from some strange combination of anger and panic, in front of Malia in only a white bra and shorts, but she knows Malia’s eyes aren’t on her chest.

The scar is large. Deep, white gashes in new, plastic shiny skin almost glimmer in the soft light of her room. They were an angry purple, once; the baby soft, fragile skin was still healing. Now, they’re an alien white, standing up like welts against the smooth expanse of her torso. She runs a shaking hand over them, flinching at the rubber texture that greets her.

They still feel so foreign. It still doesn’t feel like her.

“This,” Lydia says, removing her hand so Malia can get a long look. She wants to feel malicious delight at Malia’s shocked expression, wants to laugh at the gaping, fish face, but all she can feel is empty; as numb as the scar tissue on her body anytime a lover quirks an eyebrow as they run a hand along her side, as desolate as she is anytime they look at her like she is some ruined, broken thing. “Is what Peter Hale did to me.”

Lydia takes a step closer. Malia doesn’t stop her when she grabs her arm; Lydia doesn’t feel butterflies as she places Malia’s warm, strong hand on her side, even if her heart stutters in her chest. Malia’s face is carefully blank, hidden behind a mask, but Lydia has stared into those eyes too long to not see the fragile pain hidden in their brown depths.

“Touch it,” Lydia demands, and Malia doesn’t hesitate to comply.

It’s like Malia is touching her through a pillow, running her hand along cotton that’s been glued to Lydia’s skin. She wants to feel that hand on her for real, struck by the sudden urge to know the texture of her fingerprints, feeling them to grip her hips and pull her closer, but this is not the time.

She doesn’t know if there will ever be a right time, and she thinks she’s okay with that.

“He did this to me when I was 16. The attack was so traumatic that I was in a coma, and then a fugue state. They found me wandering around in the woods, naked, on the coldest night of the year.”

“I remember that,” Malia says. Her voice is stiff and thick as if there is gravel in her throat. She clears it, shaking her head, “I saw you. It was dark. I was going to go to you, because you smelled like- but the police found you right after I did. I thought you were just- in the woods. A prank, or something. Whatever human girls do.”

“I miss what human girls do,” Lydia admits, watching as Malia’s hand gently traces the dips and curves of the scar. “But I don’t think I was ever very good at being a human girl.”

Malia almost smiles, but Lydia watches it fade before it can even form. She pulls her hand back, and Lydia finds herself missing it. Usually, she hates people touching her scar, hates the reminder of it in general, but Malia already knows the ugliest parts of her, so what’s one more?

“What else?” Malia asks, looking up at her. “There has to be more. Your heart is beating like crazy.”

Lydia almost blushes, but manages to control herself. She walks over to her dresser and finds a simple tank top, one that makes her feel covered and safe. Malia’s body is a line of heat as she sits beside her, but Malia doesn’t seem to mind her closeness, not now, so Lydia doesn’t move.

Instead, she tells her everything, all of the details that the pack skimmed over when recruiting Malia to the cause. The words try to catch in her throat, habit from keeping secrets too long, but she forces them out, even as her voice shakes and stammers. Even when the grief and pain of it all feels like it’s going to choke her, Lydia keeps going.

“He threatened to make me kill people, Malia,” Lydia says without meaning to, and only when the words are in the air in front of her does Lydia realize that this is something she never even told Allison. It aches fiercely in her chest that there are so many things about her that her best friend never got the chance to know. “He made me see it, in my dreams, my hands covered in blood, hundreds of throats slit on my patio. I still see it, sometimes, on the hard days. He messed with my perception of reality and fiction so much that I can barely trust a single thought in my head. I know you want a family, Malia, but he is not someone you want alive, let alone as a father figure.”

It’s quiet for a long moment after that; Malia stares away from Lydia, so she can’t possibly decipher what she’s feeling. Lydia feels drained from all of the emotional purging. She wants to curl up in a ball and fall asleep to nightmares of forgotten emotions dredged up, leave Malia to work this out by herself, but she doesn’t.

Lydia has left Malia in the woods on her own, left her to repair herself in Eichen, and Lydia is not turning her back on her now; never again.

“You don’t need him,” Lydia says. “We may not be the best one, but we can be your family, Malia. I know I’m not the best at showing it, and I know I’m exceptionally good at hurting you, but I do genuinely care about you. You’re my oldest friend. I don’t think I can ever explain how important you are to me.”

She doesn’t think she’ll ever be able to properly explain everything she feels for Malia. They’ve been through so much and there’s still so much unsaid, so much hurt left unaddressed, but it’s the closest she can get tonight when she’s already ripped open her chest and laid her heart bare.

She’s not expecting it, and that’s probably why the force of it nearly knocks her off the bed. Malia’s arms are strong; they practically squeeze all of the air from Lydia’s lungs. She doesn’t think her spine will ever be the same, but Malia’s warmth surrounding her, her scent choking her, makes Lydia feel more at peace than she has in a while.

Malia holds her like she is something precious, a fragile being made of glass, but still she says, “You’re so unbelievably strong, Lydia. You’ve always been strong; I knew that from when you first walked into my den. I wish I had been here, then. I wish I could have helped you heal.”

Lydia wonders if it’s selfish for her to be happy that Malia has regrets about them too.

Lydia pulls back, slowly, until she can see Malia’s entire face, trying to decode the mystery that lays beneath her skin. Their breath intermingles, and every emotion in Malia’s brown eyes melts into a dark pool that Lydia would be more than content to drown in.

It happens before she realizes it is; the movement feels so natural and so right that it takes a second, her brain short-circuiting and restarting before she realizes what’s going on.

Her lips are soft but insistent against Lydia’s own, a scorching heat that bleeds lava into her bloodstream. All along she has compared Malia to typhoons and tsunamis, but she knows now, intimately well, that this girl is a volcano.

The heat of it feels familiar, somehow, like a warm, fickle, summer memory she wants to keep with her until she’s too old to remember even her own name. She scrambles impossibly closer, worried this moment will disappear if she dares pull away.

The kiss explodes inside of her, igniting flashbangs and gun powder until all she can do is burst and melt into Malia, their bodies dissolving into each other until they can’t tell what belongs to who.

She knows, suddenly, deeply, that every kiss she has ever had before this has been wrong.

Lydia pulls back; breaking the kiss causes an almost physical pain in her stomach, but even Malia’s lips can’t contain the words fluttering in her throat.

“I’m sorry,” Lydia says, tangling her fingers in Malia’s hair so it will be more difficult for the girl to leave. “I’m so sorry. All I’ve ever done is hurt you. I don’t want to do that anymore.”

Malia’s hands travel along the column of her spine, and of course, Lydia would love someone made of lightning, electricity crackling against every nerve in her body.

“Lydia,” she says, softly, as if afraid to admit it, “You’ve always been more to me than pain. You are the only person who can ever remind me who I am.”

She kisses her again, slower this time; the sweet intimacy of it almost kills her, takes her breath from her very lungs.

They sleep in the same bed that night, huddled so close to each other that the spaces between them feel like valleys. Lydia finds herself not minding, even as she stays awake well into the night, watching the numbers on her bedside clock climb higher and higher. She doesn’t know how long she lays there, just enjoying Malia’s warmth and smell surrounding her.

She never thought she could exist in a world with this, but she doesn’t know how she ever lived without it.

Lydia wakes alone that morning, unsurprised to find that Malia has stolen her clothes, eaten her food, and left her window opened. She's also unsurprised to find herself not minding, knowing, this time, neither of them will be left behind.

Never again.


End file.
